Sam Aiming For Perfect Ten

By Mark Heys
April 13 2007

Wanderers boss Sam Allardyce hopes to be given at least £10 million to spend to boost his summer recruitment drive and keep the club amongst the UEFA Cup hopefuls.

Allardyce feels a transfer kitty within that region would help the club to continue the progress which has been built up over the last four seasons with top eight finishes in every season since the 2003-2004 campaign.

With the likes of Henrik Pedersen and Tal Ben-Haim set to depart in the close season, Allardyce is wary that he will need at least four new players to add to his squad especially as the likes of El-Hadji Diouf, Abdoulaye Meite and Abdoulaye Faye will be also missing in the middle of next season owing to the African Nations Cup.

"I hope I'll be touching the £10m spot again, at least, If we want to maintain what we've done, it's going to take that much, certainly with the players who will be leaving us and with the UEFA Cup to plan for."

"Our squad, at the moment, is four players short of a UEFA Cup squad - and we're faced with an African Nations Cup next year."

A large proportion of this seasons transfer budget was invested in bringing proven striker Nicolas Anelka to Bolton and there was also cash sums paid out for Abdoulaye Meite, Andranik Teimourian and David Thompson over the last nine months.

Bolton chairman Phil Gartside has stuck to his word over the last two years and there has been significant investment in the club but Allardyce knows he will still have to use some of the wheeler dealer techniques he used when Wanderers first came back into the top flight in 2001.