Window of our discontent

The transfer window slammed shut last night, with one time Toon target Danny Murphy joining Martin Jol's squad of midfielders at Tottenham, and Lee Bowyer allegedly demanding too much money from his next employers to go anywhere.

Or to put it another way, our transfer activity can be summarised as follows:

Players In:
Players Out:

Hardly the strength in depth we identified as being a priority a month ago.

The only positives to emerge from a pretty bleak month are: we're still in the FA Cup and have a good chance of progressing to the Quarter Final Stage; we haven't plunged ourselves into further chaos by sacking the manager; and some of our players are coming back from injury (Parker, Emre, Ameobi and whisper it quietly but Kieron Dyer apparently has a chance of playing football for us soon.).

On the down side: we've not won a league game this year; the chairman's refusal to sack the manager and at the same time failure to give him any funds hardly amounts to full scale support; Bowyer is still on the payroll; no sign of Owen or Taylor recovering any time soon; Shearer looks badly in need of a rest; and Luque still looks lost to the point where he can't even get in the side ahead of a half fit Ameobi.