Through the seasons before us..

With days before the transfer window opening, the most popular rumour to surface today is a bid for ex-Reds midfielder David Prutton from Southampton - £500k is the rumoured fee, and certainly I know a fair few fans who would be thrilled to welcome him back.  He’s only featured once for Southampton this season so there could well be legs in the rumour.

Luke Chambers has long been touted as a player that Smoulderwood would like to bring to the City Ground, the young defender is captain of Smoulds’ former club Northampton, and would certainly reduce the average age of our defence!  The rumoured bid for Luke is £150k, which seems a bit on the cheap side to me - but then I’m not sure what his contract situation is.

Will Hoskins, the Nottingham-born striker at Rotherham United, continues to be linked to us - I imagine this would take a more sizeable bid, although given that the Millers target this season would be to overcome their 10 point deficit and avoid relegation, having set themselves well on course for this perhaps the purse-strings will become the over-riding priority and they will sell.

The final rumour I’ve heard is a new one to me - Leyton Orient’s Matt Lockwood - he’s around 30 years old and a left sided defender, so you can certainly see where the rumour comes from as we clearly need one of those!  He’s known for liking to attack and weighs in with goals, including from the penalty spot (hmm, an attacking left  back who scores goals and takes penos…).  It’s thought £150k could bring him to us, and could of course herald a return to a blessed 4-4-2 formation!

So the rumour mill has us ready to spend spend spend this january - if we were to bring in four or more players then we must offload too, so it will be interesting to see who is going out as well as who is coming in! Times like this are really frustrating until things actually start happening - until then it will just be speculation, speculation and speculation!