Agreed - and I think the conversation here often forgets the fact that we are subject to League One Salary Cost Management Protocol rules.
Which means:
a) We are only allowed to spend 60% of our income on player wages
b) If we ignore this, we can be subject to a transfer embargo
c) You cannot get around this by the owners loaning the club money - owners can inject cash but only if they provide "a signed Letter of Guarantee.....to confirm that there is no interest linked to the donation or any requirement for future repayment of the injection by the Club."
As far as I can tell, our owners never give the club anything (very, very few owners do). They loan the club money interest free, but every penny we receive from Bakrie et al. appears as a liability on the club's accounts.
But whilst they can loan the club £400k for a transfer fee and stick that on the club's balance sheet, if we are close up against the 60% wage threshold (which I can easily believe we are, given the amount of money we're wasting on Murphy, Browne, Henry, Findlay.....and to an extent McEachran & Thorniley now as well) then we may have very limited wiggle room to bring anyone else in. Certainly anyone that's going to command a big wage like JCH or Marriott.