Given our historical approach to signing in the mid to lower transfer range, we've not exactly set our particular part of footballing world alight when it comes to signing better than average players. I know it's a loaded question; paying upwards of £6-7 million guarantees very little, other than a reputation that you hope will lift the team's fortunes. Having said that, over the years we've signed genuine quality for not very much - Cowans, Speed, McGrath, Ugo, Cockerill, Morris, I could add to that short list but I hope you'll follow my drift.
If I'm right, and no doubt there are more informed minds than mine when it comes to Blade's facts, I think Beattie and Evans have been the sum total when it comes to what might loosely be referred to as "breaking the bank". To be blunt, we've preferred to follow a more conservative, even cautious, approach to signing players who might make a difference.
Now, after what seems like an absolute lifetime in the wastelands of Division 1, we're finally back in the Championship, and what a great feeling this is. I don't think for a minute that we'll look to break any transfer records in the short term, and I doubt a reckless approach to signing players is what we'll follow. My point is this, dependent on aspiration and ambition, over the next 2-5 seasons, assuming we follow Chris Wilder's guide to signing decent players, most for not very much money I must add, a point will arrive when our ambitions will be determined by a sensible but necessary approach to signing players with a market value that we've not been used to signing. In short, if we are serious in wanting to get promotion to the Premiership, then we'll need to gamble, pure and simple. Of course, who we sign may turn out to be cracking signings, and then we'll probably adopt a "we knew all along" approach to who joins us. Don't think I'm jumping the gun, I'm not, and I'm as happy as Larry that we're back in the Championship. But I sense there's a clear, if not written in neon letters, approach to wanting this to be the first step in where we want to be. And whether some of us like it or not, what now seems to be a level of spending we're unaccustomed to, it will surely become part of our determination to progress and move forward.
