I'd agree.
There are some things to bear in mind in addition.
We let Reid go in the close season, who was apparently on a large whack for the level we were at. It's not like it's been just incomings - Reid may be the standout, but other players have left, too, so there's flexibility in replacing them, anyway.
Promotion means higher anticipated gates, so a higher wage budget anyway. This can account for the new contracts, Ogogo and Brown etc. I doubt Brown is on *huge* money either, as he's just come back from injury - we're probably paying Grimmer as much! If we're paying Sterling's wages then that may or may not be eye watering (he's an unproven talent atm) but then you'd have to ask why we'd do that if it pushed us over budget and anyway, when he was signed was before we were offering McNulty a better deal (see below).
We were ablke to offer McNulty an improved contract to try and ward off interest from Reading. That improved contract clearly meant the money was there to do so, even without the income from the sale of... McNulty.
We also need to factor in another Wembley appearance as bonus cash not expected in last season's budget, in addition to the Maddison money.
So, even if that bonus cash and the Maddison money goes into hiving off losses, there's little to say that we've spent anywhere near the McNulty cash. Hiwula may well end up being a decent signing, but he was nowhere near the Huddersfield first team, and was signed for them when in the Championship, so I doubt he's on *enormous* wages. You'd hope we wouldn't be paying an unproven bloke from Walsall as much in wages as McNulty, either! The other players we've signed are hope-to-come-goods rather than immediate first teamers, too.
So... we're either (optimistically!) waiting to do a deal on Chaplin, or someone like Chaplin, or the McNulty money has not been made fully available to improve the squad. If the latter is the case, that's very disappointing given the context of other incomings. If some is being held over for January, my cynicism from times gone by suggests it'll be needed by then to pay the bills, unless we're desparetely slogging to stay up.