And that approach is exactly why we are risking relegation. When did we last pay a fee for a centre forward - Ryan Hardie when we were in L2 .A Championship-standard goal scorer would likely have cost £3-4M.
As an example, Derby paid £4M for Jerry Yates who is OK-ish but not exactly banging them in every week.
The boy from Notts County might have been worth a punt at say £500,00, but they were pushing for £1M and he would have been a massive gamble at that price.
Another Notts County CF who we were linked with - Macauley Longstaff - scored a lot of goals for them in the lower Leagues but has struggled somewhat in the Championship, scoring just 1 goal in nearly 30 appearances.
If he stays fit, we know that Tijani can be the "big, physical CF..." you mention and as we saw at Sunderland, it's not just about actual goal-scoring. He used his strength and height to good effect when he played an important part in our late equaliser.
After another full week on the training ground, I expect him to feature on Sunday and to be starting to approach something like full match fitness. He could be an important player for us in the final third of the season.
Since then we’ve tried to borrow our way up the leagues - we got lucky when we went up .
Look at the other clubs in the bottom 6
Cardiff - Salech - £3.5M from Denmark - 1.92 m - has already scored
Derby - Salvesen from Norway -£1M
Luton - Nordas from Norway - £3M - 1.94
Portsmouth- Waddingham from Australia - over £1M but has already scored
Stoke - Al Hamadi on loan from Ipswich
Almost all of these present a risk and who knows whether they ‘ll be successful. We were told our board was “ all in “ in trying to stay up yet we made a £4M profit . At some stage if we are serious about staying in this league or getting out of L1 we are going to need to pay for a striker and that will probably mean taking a risk unless we are paying market value . The one thing that may have held us back this window was the ability for the sort of strikers above to get a work permit given we have used our ESC quota . That would limit us to the UK market hence I guess the interest in Jatta .
As it is we are pinning our hopes on an injury prone striker , who has shown little to date .
I’m not saying the recruitment team have had it easy because they’ve not - it must have been pretty tough and dispiriting at times . Puscz , Maxi , Katic aren’t risky signings but when it comes to forwards unless you are paying market value you need to take the risk - £1M for Jatta ( assuming he wanted to come ) or £10-£12M if we go down.
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