I've left writing this to the last minute, hoping my mood would lift to allow me not to moan for the entire column. But it hasn't, so I apologise in advance.

I've left writing this to the last minute, hoping my mood would lift to allow me not to moan for the entire column. But it hasn't, so I apologise in advance.

Having already written about the sale of Dean Ashton on NCISA's website and having penned my thoughts to Neil Doncaster, I will not be touching that issue - with one exception.

Had Mr Doncaster said: “We have received a bid that we must keep confidential, but when the board have discussed it the fans will be informed as soon as possible,” then there wouldn't be any ill-feeling.

Would that have jeopardised the deal or had any long-term effects on the club? No.

Now, though, if the club deny a £3m bid for, say, Cameron Jerome, does that mean we can expect to see him soon? Does that mean we have made a bid of £3.1m or £2.9m?

The rumour makers (blamed for so much by the club recently) will have a field day playing with the meaning and actual intent of words.

That aside, the catalyst for my bad mood was the whole debacle involving the signing of Carl Robinson.

Are we really supposed to believe that the club has such a cashflow problem that Delia and Michael Wynn Jones needed to look down the back of the sofa to find £50,000?

To have broadcast it could only have been for their benefit of future player purchases - the old 'pleading poverty' trick with board members of other clubs. Or it was designed to make the fans think we would have to sell to buy and prepare fans for the disappearance of a player with a very short shelf-life if, indeed, he gets injured as often as we are led to believe?

For a club that has sold land for the riverside flats development, that spent last season in the land of milk and honey and that is in receipt of a parachute payment, we appear worryingly hard-up.

The whole Robinson situation is like a beggar asking for spare change wearing designer clothes - it doesn't add up, nor does it get sympathy, especially when you look at the goods that have been bought in the past seven or eight months.

In any other environment they would have been returned as faulty a long, long time ago.

Paul McVeigh (will he be here next season?) has been magnificent since his inclusion in the starting 11. It's not a fluke that we appear to have some idea of playing football when he is in the team.

And that's also why we haven't won a game without Youssef Safri.

It's called quality, and we do not have nearly enough of it - summer signings included.

However, there is still waffle spoken in interviews.

There have been plenty of examples, but these stick in my mind: “We've got the strongest squad in the division”; “The squad now is better than when we went up”; “We'll silence the Wolves roar” (we conceded the first goal within 72 seconds); and “Watford is the biggest game of the season” along with “We can clean up” (we promptly conceded three goals at home to the Hornets).

The only time I can remember nothing being said was before the Sheffield United game - our best performance of the season and one in which we stuffed Neil Warnock's comments back down the hole they emerged from. Coincidence?