Early transfer speculation...

The Daily Mail is first with a view that we are interested in Scowcroft and Fletcher from Palace and that Darren Ambrose is a Wolves target.

 James Scowcroft's career has nosedived in recent seasons. There was a time when we was too hot and too expensive for us but that was in the early part of this decade when he was scoring regularly for Ipswich and Leicester. He's struggled for the last few years and at 33 looks washed-up to me. I guess that makes him competitive with Deon Burton though, and perhaps he's the sort of player we are going to have to get used to and hope we can get a swan-song from over the next year or two. If we do sign another forward, you have to shout "what the f**** going on with Todorov?"

Carl Fletcher finds himself out-of-favour at Selhurst at the moment but he's not the sort of midfielder we need. He's a holding type and tends to play side-to-side rather than front to back and we already have several of those. Perhaps it's just lazy journalism - they are out targets at Palace and we are the depserate next door neighbours who might offer them least-inconvenience moves? 

Ambrose can go anywhere as far as I am concerned and I am sure he will be a priority for the Board as they try continue to cut costs. Ambrose away is obvious too for the journos as our Board will be cursing their luck that he didn't manage to score a goal or do anything else whilst at Ipswich to convince Jim Magilton that he was worth adding to the payroll. You have to ask why Wolves would need him but he's one of those players who had massive promise and whom other managers might believe they could polish-up on the cheap - he is still only 24. Whilst I gave up on him some time ago, I wouldn't rule this out altogther and someone like Mick McCarthy might get some good cameos out of him playing in a better side than us?

The giveaway will be if we start going for better players from league One, although again, it's hard to see why we would be attractive in our current predicament unless we were paying big moolah and we know that won't be the case.

Phil Parkinson is quoted talking about Zheng Zhi being like a new player when ready to return before month-end, but you have to believe that is tonge-in-cheek advertising. If we don't sell Zheng Zhi, it's hard to see where the funds are coming from to buy anyone. His and Weaver's wages would support three or four more modest player wages but in terms of transfer fees it's hard to see us spending what we haven't got. What price an injured Zheng a year on from the West Brom rumours? £1m would seem to be good business at the moment.