Arthur – Not Hopeful Of Attracting Players

A goalkeeper, a right back, a left back, a centre half, a right sided midfielder/winger, a central midfielder and another striker or two, are just a few of the commodities on the NFFC shopping list this January transfer window.

The club have had long enough now to identify and secure the people they need, but once again we are leaving it until the death before doing the business. At least I hope we’ll be doing the business, because failure to strengthen the current playing staff, will result in a very sorry end to the season.

The Billy Davies era at NFFC has got off to a flyer, but the honeymoon period is about to end. The good work that he has done in recent weeks, could all count for nothing if we fail to strengthen during this window. Make no mistake about it, we are going down if this team isn’t added to with the quality required. Now I know we aren’t going to fill all the positions above, but we do need at least a defender, a keeper for cover and a midfielder/winger.

Whether we get anyone in remains to be seen, but Mark Arthur appears to be getting his excuses in early. He told BBC Radio Nottingham. ‘We’ve put in four written offers but I’m not terribly hopeful to be perfectly honest. One of our slight problems is our position in the table. We’re not prepared to pay over the odds. We’ve done that in the past. We’ve chased these people down to get them to the club and in the end they’ve proved to be the wrong type of person or the wrong type of player. We’re trying to build something for the long-term future.’

With any luck, we will get a couple in and hopefully find that Mark Arthur was just being cautious with his words. I for one will not be a happy bunny on Tuesday, if we fail yet again in this window. So will many others. We all know the cost of failure….I think the club does as well. We don’t need wholesale changes, but we do need a few fresh faces in. Even Billy Davies won’t keep this lot up, at least give him something to work with.