There’s been a bit of a debate brewing – it’s been happening today between my brother and various people on twitter and it’s been happening on the various forums.

The consensus seems to be that we haven’t made any signings because we haven’t offered enough money – whether that’s in our bids to the clubs or in our offer of wages.

Personally I have no idea how true that is – it has been said that our initial bids for Pratley and Whittingham were too low, but I don’t know if there have been subsequent bids, and if so, what their value was. Certainly, it’s best to start low, especially when you are known as the club that has money to spend.

As for wages, I think these are more important that transfer fees. We carry on paying wages for years to come; regardless of our financial position. So if we were relegated, someone on top whack Championship wages (who, say, was happy to sit out his fat contract rather than risk lower wages elsewhere) could cause a serious problem to us.

It may not be money that is stopping the signings – maybe we offer great wages but the players view us as one of those fickle clubs where the players are booed as soon as things turn against us (which certainly isn’t unheard of at the City Ground). Or the kickbacks to agents isn’t as big as it is from other clubs (remember Doughty’s rant about agents’ fees a few years back?)

But assuming it is all about the transfer fees and wages, the debate is now raging – what should our strategy be?

Since the Pl*tt era (which was before Nigel Doughty took over as chairman; if I remember rightly, Doughty was the owner but Eric Barnes ran things), the emphasis has most definitely been on balancing the books. There have been aberrations – Joe Kinnear promising to sign anything that moved (and actually signing a few players that didn’t move) – but overall, the point of the Acquisition Committee seems to have been to never let us get saddled with a load of fat waster high earners on long-term contracts.

But is it time to speculate to accumulate?

Cardiff seem to be doing alright and outspending everyone despite having flirted with administration and still not having paid their bills.

Leicester famously stayed up by going into administration and keeping their best players, whilst we did the “right thing”, sold our talent to balance the books and promptly got relegated.

Portsmouth are still here, despite their farcical ownership soap opera and ridiculous financial situation.

And Notts aren’t doing too badly, despite being football’s favourite laughing stock.

Should Nigel Doughty just say “here’s the rest of my money – this will either work and we’re flying high – or we’re fucked and the Conference beckons”?