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Historians tell us that generals go into conflicts using new technology but the last war’s tactics.

That strategic time lag seems to apply to the current transfer window too, with the long attritional grind of seven years in the Championship shaping the mental landscape and feeding directly into some supporters’ summer shopping wishlists.

Boro have gone through a financial seismic shift with promotion to the Premier League catapulting them instantly into Planet Football’s top 30 richest clubs.

They have the market muscle to compete with all but two or three clubs in Italy, a handful in Spain and one or two in Germany and France. And they have an appliance of science scouting set-up that has been years in the making.

Boro are now in a position to not just identify quality players from around the continent with the skill-sets and profiles to slot into Aitor Karanka’s system and squad, but also deliver them.

And yet some people are still fighting last summer’s transfer battles.

Some people are sifting through the bargain bins for people who could “do a job.”

We all know what the criteria for Boro targets were through the post-relegation dark days of belt-tightening and the austerity that followed the disastrous Great Jockification under Gordon Strachan.

And in recent years we have all become adept at totting up the spend, measuring it against Boro’s meagre income and mentally judging whether transfers would squeeze under the Financial Fair Play ceiling.

So as a community we have allowed the limits of our horizons and imagination to close in on us in recent years. We have become like humble folk who win the lottery and rush out on a spending spree, buying all those things spotted in Primark and New Look.

There is an unspoken list of types that emerge from Teesside’s collective muttering of the masses when it comes to signing speculation and a consensus easily evolves of who “we are after.”

There is a sentiment clouded yearning for former Boro players... James Morrison was a viable target, yes, but several people have separately told me that Boro should go and get David Wheater. He’s available on a free.

Then there are all the players were linked with last season but couldn’t quite get over the line: Patrick Bamford, Alex Pritchard and others. Those names will rear their heads again.

Read more The players linked with Boro so far this summer

In fact, anyone who has ever been linked in the press - however tenuously - comes back on the radar. So expect Ross McCormack, Rickie Lambert and Jon Walters rumours.

Anyone released by a Premier League side, anyone who was good against us in the Championship last season, anyone from the relegated sides, anyone who played in the Spain Under-16, 17, 18 or 21 sides when Aitor was there...

Or anyone who was at Real Madrid when he was in the dug-out can be easily linked too. But the landscape has changed now. They are last season’s mooted moves.

When it comes to scouting, Boro have stepped up a gear now and not just financially, although that helps.

(Image: Katie Lunn)

Gary Gill has overseen the transformation of the recruitment model and added data and hi-tech video systems to a well-informed army of human eyes on the ground that spots talent early.

We already know that Boro spotted Viktor Fischer very early on in his career. And that they had kept tabs on Victor Lindelof - now said to be a £20m Manchester United target - through his development.

And there will be more of those players on their list: burgeoning talents on the upward trajectory in their career curve and still relatively cheap, and with a potential resale value if they fulfil their promise.

Given the market muscle of promotion to the big league, Boro are now in a position to make that hard work count.

And last year the club brought in Victor Orta to add a fully-fledged European dimension to the system.

Orta, a former journalist, agent and coach helped build a cost-effective, productive and profitable recruitment model at Sevilla.

(Image: @BEMBIBRE3 / TWITTER)

He is hugely respected by scouting, coaching and technical professionals and also by administrators at the top level clubs across Europe - and he has an amazing contacts book.

Knowledge is power and he has it in spades. Plenty of people know a good player when they see one, but not many have a comprehensive knowledge of youth and academy football across the continent.

More importantly, not many people are plugged into the neural network of gossip inside football’s closed coaching and scouting community, who know when a player may unexpectedly become available because a manager is about to change, or because a club are set to buy someone in his position.

There are not many people who can make a call to ask the question. Or take a call when an agent from a club we know next to nothing about may be ready to cash in on the next big thing.

It is no surprise that a transfer tug-of-war is shaping up between Manchester United and newly-minted Everton over sporting director Monchi, the man who worked with Orta at Sevilla.

Clubs know that insight, information and shrewd scouting is key to securing talent in an era when lots of rivals have massive resources.

That kind of information can give Boro an edge and transform the type of target we are after.

That said, Danny Graham is available.