All summer Preston North End have been chasing at least two strikers.
Troy Parrott has filled one gap, and with rumours that Emil Riis could be leaving it was suddenly looking very bleak.
The Dane is now staying for the time being but no other strikers will be joining until at least January.
Riis will have to score plenty of goals as they don’t look like they will be coming from anywhere else.
One attacker who had been linked with a move to Preston was former player Callum Robinson.
Ryan Lowe even spoke about him when the team were on pre-season in Spain saying of course he’s a player he would be interested in.
At the time it looked like Robinson would be too much money for Preston, with a fee of around £4 million being mentioned, but he has now joined Cardiff City for less than half that.
BBC Sport report that the fee is just £1.5million and Cardiff have now confirmed Robinson’s arrival.
Robinson left Deepdale in 2019 to join then Premier League side Sheffield United.
After one goal against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge he came back to the Championship joining West Bromwich Albion on loan and helping them gain promotion to the top flight before joining permanently.
Robinson scored four more goals against Chelsea the following season but West Brom immediately returned to the Championship.
He has also established himself as one of the first choice strikers for Republic of Ireland. He has seven goals on the international stage including a hat-trick against Qatar.
Robinson made 16 goal contributions in the Championship for The Baggies last season and in his last campaign with Preston he scored 12 goals in just 27 league games. There is no doubting he is a good player at this level, and would definitely have improved Ryan Lowe’s squad.
Our options up front are slim. Emil Riis should be first choice, but has been on the bench for the last five games. Parrott has yet to find his scoring boots, and Ched Evans and Sean Maguire are unlikely to ever find theirs again.
Considering in 2019 we signed Tom Bayliss for a similar fee, it is hard to comprehend that we didn’t go for Callum Robinson at £1.5million.
But Ryan Lowe has also spoken on deadline day to Lancs Live saying; “If we can keep the lads fit and firing and get to January, where things change again, we’ll look at that. But we want a settled group and I’ve certainly got that. Gone are the days where we’ll be signing players for £1.2million and £1.5million – those days are gone.”
Lowe went on to say with regards to Callum, “We were well out of the picture with that because again, wage demands, fee demands, it just wasn’t doable.”
It’s hard for Preston fans to read but that is the situation we are in, and it is going to remain to be incredibly hard to compete in a league when the majority of the teams comfortably have more money to spend.