Is there a message to our transfers?

Well that's three signings made in a short space of time. Quite frankly, I'm not used to it although I'm not going to grumble about it.

I mean how can you grumble? We've secured a highly-rated French international midfielder in the form of Yohan Cabaye, a Senegalese striker who has demonstrated that he can score goals in the Premier League in the shape of Demba Ba, and a winger that had all but signed for Liverpool only for the deal to fall through, for whatever reason, at the last minute in the guise of Sylvain Marveaux.

Well apparently you can grumble as, despite their pedigree and talent, they aren't expensive enough for some of our fans. Personally I would call it good business, although it seems as though the transfer fund watchers are out on force after the arrival of these three players.

Quite rightly it's been pointed out that those three players arrived for roughly the same amount as what Kevin Nolan left for. This, essentially, should leave a fairly big chunk of the Andy Carroll transfer fee ready to be used when you take off a bit for wages and so on.

This is not a bad move. We've been hearing for ages now, from Alan Pardew and Graham Carr, about how the club are doing their homework in the transfer market. I'm assuming that this homework is paying off in the form of these three players.

Cheapos or freebies maybe, but does it really matter? Not to me it doesn't. If we can get quality in for little outlay then I'm all for it. Would people have preferred it had we spent say £15 million on Cabaye, Demba Ba and Marveaux? Would it make them better or worse players? In a word, no.

The way I see it is that the club have acted quickly to secure players who are high priority due to their contractual situations or due to the possibility of another club pipping us to them. Basically the club have acted quickly, but only because they will have had to or risk losing out.

It's been pointed out that we've effectively not spent a penny (well in footballing terms anyway) so far this window, but isn't that a good thing? We have cash to spend still so if something comes up we can act just as quickly. I mean did people expect us to lavish cash as soon as the window opened? If so, how many other clubs have done the same so far in this window?

The fact is that it it's rare that you see much activity this early in the window. Players will be holding out to see what happens and who comes in for them before committing to a move anywhere, much like we are seeing with Jose Enrique right now as it happens. Later on in the window, when things start moving, we'll have the cash, and it would appear, the speed to be able to move quickly.

So in conclusion, don't panic. We may not have spent anything thus far, but there is still time to go and we do still have cash in the bank if the right player comes along.

Mind you, more freebies like we've got would be nice!