I believe, perhaps naively, that there’s still funds that was earmarked for the Stamenic transfer that never went through. There’s been snippets that we’re still negotiating for Marsden.
We were told about Dovin at the start of the window and he came in about 6-8 weeks after the matter.
If you’re going for higher quality players, these things take time to materialise!
I really hope this is true. I definitely would be surprised at this phase of the club's growth if our transfer strategy hinged on two downstream transfers (Gyok & Hamer) happening - which we have no control over. To need those to happen to strengthen central midfield for example - would be very dissapointing indeed.
Another thought I have is that Stamenic perhaps would have been part of a strategy to then sell Sheaf and fund the rest of our deals like Dovin and BTA based off of that. Now that Stamenic deal went tits up, they've had to radically change the order of things.
Where that leaves us is a) sell a valuable player to fund more activity b) do nothing and pray for a Gyok/Hamer move.
b) in particular just doesn't add up to me. I believe we're smarter than that.