Can McCarthy Beat The Transfer Deadline?

He is leaving it late. Very late. As the clock ticks towards the cut-off point, there is still no sign of anything forthcoming with regard to a striker and yet a striker remains our top priority.

We of course cannot compete with the clubs who still have those massive parachute payments but surely we can find someone further down the leagues who is good enough to sign up for Ipswich Town?

I am amazed that McCarthy and his scouts have not looked farther afield, if forwards in Britain are proving to be too expensive?

Why not our old familiar hunting ground Holland for example? I watch the Eredivisie almost every week here and there are a lot of good strikers playing in the top flight of Dutch football, who are with smaller clubs and who would jump at the chance of a move to England!

Now we are supposed to have scouts on the look-out all over Western Europe but all they seem to recommend in the end is Irishmen!

Belgium has a world class squad but it is players on the very fridges of international recognition that we should be focussing our attention on because there are some quality players out there that appear so far to be untapped.

If we are to look simply in the UK then let us look further down the divisions because the FA Cup this term should have taught us all that quality does not just exist in the Premier League alone.

I will be disappointed if, for the second transfer window in a row, we have not been able to bring in a striker to replace Daryl Murphy.

Is it our bargaining power that is the problem, or more to do with the fact that owner Marcus Evans is loathe to give the failing Mick McCarthy too much spending money?

I doubt whether salaries are really an issue when you take on players from the lower leagues and to think that both Sutton United and Lincoln City are from non-league football and are in the 5th round of the FA CUP, suggests that it is perhaps only football snobbery that is preventing us eating some more humble pie.

That defeat to The Imps should have been a lesson learned I think.


Frank Weston Editor of Vital Ipswich