We've definately got 3/4 of those and I presume we're not bad payers. We also had no trouble attracting good players when we were in League 1, but competition is far greater in the Championship. I shall try and keep the faith, but am getting twitchy. Our present team is good and we should still do well this season, but not many teams stick solely with previous team when they get promoted.
As far as we know, only two of our targets have reached the player negotiation stage or at least a situation where the host club have accepted our offer - Sharp + Cork. If our end of the Sharp story is to be believed, which I personally think it is, then the initial contract offered by us was suggestively altered by Sharp (more likely his agent), whereby it became a less desirable deal for SFC. As for the latter, I'm not entirely sure that we've had the opportunity to discuss terms with Cork yet due to his postponed holidaying after his U21s venture. Otherwise we probably would have heard differently, like with the potential Sharp deal. If Adkins knew Cortese wasn't fully behind his aims to bring in two (or three) players in, I'm not so sure he would have publicly stated our shopping list as it may highlight a difference in opinion and backing between the two. At the end of the day, and as you say, we can speculate all we like but we've been told we won't hear anything for at least another three weeks. God I hate how well run this club is nowadays!
I also think that teams like Leicester (possibly Birmingham and West Ham too) are seriously inflating the market. Add to the fact that Cortese is probably fairly strict about wages may mean that we lose out.
