I'm not a big fan of loans particularly how the club have used them over the past few years but that can help, you just don't want too many of them. Bullard pretty much single handedly kept us in the Championship when he was on loan, it was when he signed permanently it went down hill. Definitely prefer loans with a view to permanent transfer Burley made good use of those i.e. Clapham, Reuser, Magilton, Armstrong etc. hopefully we can get back to that, problem is pretty much since Burley has left the club haven't been in great shape off the pitch (and often on it) which has meant we have needed loans to plug holes in the squad and desperate, hopefully we'll get back to only using them if we have a big injury or with a view to getting the player permanently
Re Coulson I think he’s like Burns; can play all the way up the pitch so the idea is he fills in as the left attacker with Penney behind. We’ll need more on both sides for depth; once one of those four is injured or suspended we’re seriously short of unqualified to play this system of Cooks.
We can all name loanees who have come in and done a good job but for every one of those there are at least five who gave us nothing. We can’t exactly heap praise on Burley and Sheepshanks for their dealings. They bankrupted the club. We have never needed loans and thankfully we are now buying our own players again.
I simply know that I would drive 300 mole round trip to watch players like Gio, Reuser, Jonny Bullard and Jim Magilton ploughing the PR turf. They sparkled, the fans loved them and loans or not, we won football matches!
Town in talks with Barnsley for Chaplin, i know nothing about him but he was in a good side last season so can't be too shabby!
All fine attacking players, my original point that became somewhat diluted. Can’t say that any of them would have dropped down to the third tier to play for us, though.
Sounds like a signing with decent pedigree however feel we definitely need more experience at the back. This guy has made about the same number of first team appearances as Woolfenden but is older and played the majority of them at a lower level. Sounds like one who we will develop However if we can pull off the Chaplin signing I will be mightily impressed and would really show our ambition.