In February, about 100 club officials, scouts and agents gathered at Villa Park for a networking event.
Over coffee and pastries, in William McGregor's in the Trinity Road Stand, representatives from clubs including Liverpool, West Ham, Birmingham, Preston, Derby, Aston Villa and Manchester City chatted, along with agents, to prepare for the summer and debrief the winter.
In the afternoon, Villa's head of emerging talent and loans Adam Henshall gave a presentation on how the club oversees its loaning out of players - outlining the data, the risk and reward elements they take into consideration before sending their young talent out.
Henshall had been asked to provide insight into Villa's workings by TransferRoom, which uses its online platform to connect clubs and agents, potentially initiating or accelerating moves.
About 800 clubs have signed up and, this week, Villa, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Manchester City and United, Roma and Borussia Dortmund will be among more than 200 who will meet with 55 agencies in Madrid for a 'deal day' where moves can be finalised. Online events are held too.
The aim is to aid clubs in a window which is expected to erupt in the second half of August, clubs having been unable to get the majority of deals done early because of the World Cup.
Meanwhile, clubs in the English Football League are finding they have to wait for those at the top to make their decisions to kick-start the market, even if plans are well in place.
Ideally, clubs aim to work at least one window ahead, with one senior Premier League recruitment executive insisting anything else is "reactionary".
In the top flight, clubs will know who is most likely to move and can plan in advance.
It is vastly different lower down where there is the acceptance that, if a player is performing well, they could be likely to move on.
Essentially, any player is tradeable, leaving sporting directors and managers to firefight.
Many lower EFL clubs also look to time moves to save on wages, signing someone later in the window meaning they might save weeks' worth of salary payments.
The amount of data used in recruitment also varies greatly throughout the leagues - platforms analysing players are available, but the cost of accessing means that some clubs in the lower leagues will not be able to justify the expense.
But for all, planning starts early with work on the summer window typically starting almost immediately after the winter window.
"It'll be a couple of weeks after the January window shuts," says former Portsmouth, Blackpool, Oxford and Shrewsbury boss Michael Appleton.
"The closer you get to the window opening, your meetings become a lot more regular.
"At the start of March, I'm sitting down with the recruitment team once a week but once you get closer to the window that becomes every few days and then leading into the window, possibly every day."
Much, though, will depend on the club's network. In some instances, they might contact an agency 12 months before a move, discussing the contract or estimated fee, but other moves will be just days from initial contact to completion. One lower league club has previously searched for targets' agents on Instagram.
All, though, will try to gather as much information as possible on their target list - even if they know they will not land them all.
