Between a rock and a hard place...

Harry Redknapp says that most of our money is gone - that went on funding the Peter Crouch signing. So in order for other 'big names' to arrive he now needs to sell some of the 'fringe players'...

A couple of players were always likely to go, but what we get in for them will not go that far towards funding the signings of the 'big name players' we have been promised, yep we have Crouch but by Peter Storrie's own words there 'should' be at least 1 more top quality signing to come...

Selling people like Djimi Traore, Lauren, Sean Davis, Richard Hughes, Noe Pamarot and so on will not raise sufficient funds to sign the likes of Shaun Wright-Phillips will they - that is not to say that I would necessarily want all those names to go, they are just people that would probably be most likely to leave. Although I would still be more than happy, if this is acceptable from Chelski's end to just get him in on a season loan with the option to buy next summer! There is no harm in that, although I would suspect they would prefer to sell now?

Then again, in order to sign 1 player we might have to sell 2 or 3 to fund his signing, which, as good as this 1 player might be will severely deplete our resources in terms of player numbers and squad depth, which we desperately need this season. The extra quality would clearly tell, but the lack of numbers could come back to haunt us big time... All that said, if we could not sign another 'high profile name' keeping those that we do have would be almost as beneficially as if we start selling these, although we might get the kind of money to buy in 2 or 3 this works in the other way, we increase the squad size, but the overall quality would no doubt diminish!

Redknapp can be 'economical' with the truth, and whilst I do not doubt that we are short of funds - and we do not have an endless supply of this - I am not convinced that this has 'gone' as the implication is. After the Exeter game he said he still expected another couple of players to sign, so we get the 'mixed signals' we sometimes get from him - but at would cost will these signings come in terms of numbers leaving?

So the question is, even if a player is top quality is sacrificing as many as 3 squad players for his signing the right thing for us to do? Would that extra quality count for anything when 'the bare bones' speech is given...

PLAY UP POMPEY!

Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.