As the calendar wearily ticked over to 2015 the inevitable disappointment of the January transfer window loomed ever closer. I can’t work out which is more likely, David Haigh being released from his middle-eastern prison with a full pardon and limo waiting, or Leeds signing good players in the positions we need.

This isn’t even undue criticism, we don’t have a good history in the January transfer window. In fact, we have a bloody appalling history here. I’m not going to lament our previous failings though, but let’s consider the following:

2014 – Cameron Stewart, Jimmy Kebe. Both dire.

2013 – Ryan Hall, Michael Tonge, Ross Barkley (who Neil didn’t want to play), Steve Morison, Stephen Warnock (a good player!) and Habib Habibou. Not forgetting that we sold club captain Robert Snodgrass.

2012 – Danny Pugh, Robbie Rogers, Danny Webber and Fabian Delph (who I do like). Not forgetting that we sold club captain Johnny Howson (and earlier that season sold Max Gradel and Kasper Schmeichel).

So it’s fair to say I’m not optimistic entering this transfer window but I feel it’s not without due reason. Out of all those players Stephen Warnock is the only one we signed that is any use. Whereas we’ve got a history of selling club captains in January. Club captains we desperately still needed.

How many can we bring in?

If my understanding of the league rules are correct, we can bring in 4 players. We wouldn’t ordinarily be restricted but because we’ve missed the Financial Fair Play threshold so spectacularly we’re under a transfer embargo, meaning we can only bring in loan players. Which isn’t a problem because Cellino’s “loan to buy” scheme works quite nicely – if the player is terrible then we’re at least not lumbered with them for years. David Norris, please stand up.

You can never guarantee that a player unknown to the Championship (or indeed English football in general) can cut it, so it’s perhaps useful that Massimo will be unable to permanently sign anyone because it’s a bit of a lottery, loans at least give us an opportunity to renege on the deal.

Okay then, WHAT do we need?

Contraversially, I wouldn’t be focusing on defenders necessarily. That sounds utterly ridiculous when you consider our defensive shambles but as I highlighted in my recent piece looking at our performance statistics, we’re defending at the same level as we were last season. While that’s hardly a glowing endorsement, it means that our defense isn’t worse than it was but our overall performance is – meaning we need to fix other components. I don’t deny that there’s a MASSIVE need for a leader at the back, but we’re not talking “improve” we’re talking triage.

We’re the footballing equivalent of a man whose spleen is on show; while it would be great to re-set his broken ankle, we need to stop him bleeding to death in the next 10 minutes first.

Creativity

That same statistical piece showed that we’re simply not creating any chances, so for me the biggest area that needs improvement is here. We have no natural width forcing full-backs into advanced positions which over-exposes our centre-backs. If we had creative players who could operate in wider roles it would:

Allow us to ditch the damn diamond Allow full-backs the chance to defend Allow players like Adryan the chance to play a role, rather than continually seek the ball Provide service to the forwards

We don’t have players who can turn a match, win it from nothing. Historically, our players who could do that were Ross McCormack (who played a free-attacking role), Max Gradel (a winger) and Robert Snodgrass (a winger). It would suggest that adding a talented winger or two could massively improve our chance creation. It certainly does for those who play against us – we really struggle against wingers.

Forwards

I think we need options here, too. Billy Sharp is a target man or a poacher – either way, he needs service. Antenucci is a slightly more advanced forward. Doukara isn’t a footballer at worst, and a battering ram at best. We lack two things: speed and height. Speed would allow us to play balls beyond the opposition defense for someone to run onto, whereas height would theoretically give us some advantage in set pieces and attacking crosses.

The problem with our current setup is that we have 3 forwards in the first team who are all similar in their approach. Montenego could perhaps be our “speed” answer, as he looked quite rapid for the development squad, but is unproven. Rumours are that signing Pavoletti is little more than a formality at this point – a man whose scoring record is pretty good, but I don’t know enough about him to comment on what role he fits into. At 6ft2 he’s not tiny, so could perhaps add a bit of height to our attack.

Defence

Ideally we’d add Vincent Kompany to our back line to be a natural captain and shore things up. In reality that’s not going to happen and we’re likely going to make do with what we have. I think it’s time for Charlie Taylor to step up, too, to replace Warnock while injured.

Italians? English? THE DUTCH?

Unlike some fans I don’t personally mind whether we obtain Italians, Englishmen or people from Slovenia – as long as they can play football. I would obviously prefer players of a quality proven at the level we need them to play at. In reality we’re going to obtain Italian loanees and some will work, some won’t. That’s just how things are going to go under the Cellino regime.

So why will it suck?

Because the players we need won’t be the ones we get. We need creative wide players, whereas we’re rumoured to get central midfielders. We need proven players at this level, but we’ll be again rolling the dice. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that players can take a while to adjust to this league – Adryan the Wonderhorse is only just finding his groove and we’re half way through the season. Berardi, Bellusci and Bianchi are still trying to find their feet.

So while Neil says that there’s some short-termism needed to apply triage to this badly injured club, I worry that bringing in more players who need 10+ matches to adapt isn’t going to give us the sudden uplift in form we desperately need.

I’m not deliberately trying to be grumpy, I’m just setting myself up to be cheerfully surprised when Massimo brings world class players into the club for no money under a transfer embargo.