Exeter City did their best to steal a march on the rest of the capitalist world by signing three new players last week.
The final deal, to bring Alex Nicholls back on loan from Northampton Town, was concluded last Thursday – less than 24 hours before countries like England, the United States, France and Canada went shopping mad on a day dubbed Black Friday.
Consumers, wanting to buy into the whole idea of super-shopping day, are normally on the lookout for cut-price deals and it seems City have managed to pick up some bargains themselves.
Clinton Morrison arrived on non-contract teams and is looking to impress over the next five weeks to earn a permanent move in January.
Nicholls is also only due to be at St James's Park until January but, with his current deal at Northampton expiring in the new year, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him stay beyond that.
And Ryan Harley, a player who impressed so much last time he was a City player, has rejoined the club having been frozen out at Swindon Town.
I have heard some City fans question the Morrison signing, but I think it is an excellent bit of business.
The 35-year-old striker is getting on in his football career and may not have had a great scoring record at his previous club Colchester – four goals in 70 games – but he has managed to find the back of the net at the very top of the English game regularly for Crystal Palace.
He is also playing for next to nothing for the Grecians and stepping down to League Two for the first time, so Paul Tisdale has very little to lose by giving him a chance.
It might block some young players' path into the team, but are they pushing hard enough for a place in the starting XI?
And, who knows, Morrison may even be able to pass some of his knowledge onto the likes of Matt Jay and Ollie Watkins, so their is a flipside to that coin.
Harley, at 29, is a bit younger. He knows the City squad and the way they play well. I can't see any reason why he shouldn't be able to rediscover the form he had when he previously played for City between 2008 and 2011.
Nicholls is the same, he knows City well, and, at 26, is someone with some of his best playing days ahead of him.
However, apart from managing to get a few cut-price deals, was it really much of a Black Friday for City?
One of the origins of Black Friday comes from the basis that the term it is not linked to the chaos or gloomy scenes of violence that greet the November shopping day, but from the fact that struggling companies manage to turn their accounts from red into black, or debt into profit, based on one day's trade.
City were of course a struggling company at the start of November – when interim chairman Julian Tagg admitted that the club was considering taking out a loan with from the Professional Footballers' Association. Have they had their 'Black Friday' in the last month?
It is a little bit puzzling to see where the money has come from to sign these players, or if they have come for next to nothing, and where the cash to keep them beyond January will arrive from.
Perhaps City's 'Black Friday' is yet to come when talented midfielder Matt Grimes leaves the club in the new year.
And I say that in the terms of City changing their accounts from red to black and nothing else. This is because, lets face it, City have to allow Grimes to go to better his career and, with the recent arrivals and money in the bank, the club will be in a better position at the start of 2015 than they were in November. It is nothing to be gloomy about.
