Did we miss out on Walker and McNulty?

The pre-season friendlies continued last night at Colchester as the Addicks came from behind to win 2-1.

It was another good run out for players such as Forster-Caskey, Oshilaja, and Williams before a whole lot of changes were made at the half and on the hour. Brendan Wiredu came on in the final minutes and scored the winner, his 4th in 4 games. The midfielder seemingly being given more of a wide forward role by Bowyer in pre-season, and the 19-year old has done himself no harm and with numbers short, he can expect to be knocking on the first team squad door, just as Albie Morgan did at the start of last season.

Friendly games are a little blah aren’t they. I’ve witnessed summer’s when we have sailed through pre-season thrashing all and sundry and then not winning until the middle of October. Likewise the opposite has happened too. Karl Robinson’s Charlton thrashed Ipswich 6-1 just two season’s ago as an example.

What is obvious to everyone is the lack of numbers. Bow and Gallen continue to beaver away behind the scenes, and with a budget no different to last year, patience is a virtual. Bowyer said last night that Sunderland had beaten us to his striker target. That is thought to be either Marc McNulty from Reading or Tyler Walker from Nottingham Forest. The word was that it was definitely a loan from a fellow Championship club.

Of course Bowyer has been pretty adept at mind games, so we’ll see, but it’s very frustrating, it not a shock, that RD hasn’t allowed any growth in player budget especially given the owner is expected to pocket £1.3m from Everton following the sale of Ademola Lookman to RB Leipzig.

The long drawn out saga of Erhun Oztumer continues. Bolton have all kind of issues with their players, and Oztumer has been seeking guidance from the PFA.

The Deji Oshilaja signing was a bolt out of the blue, so I’m not reading too much into ‘in the know’ rumours. I would expect five loan signings, but the bulk of these coming in the week after Blackburn. Hopefully we can add a couple of permanents before then. We need them.