Matthew Kilgallon Transfer Says A Lot

The answer to that will, I suspect, depend on your allegiance to a particularly football club. Kilgallon didn't come to Newcastle because he felt he could get a move to a Premier League club on better wages in the summer, with Everton thought to be in pole position.

Sunderland have decided to move in quickly, offer around £2m for the defender and give him the wages he expected to get in the summer. They have stolen a march, as they say, and we will only know how wise the decision is when we see Kilgallon in a red and white shirt.

Some Newcastle fans will be annoyed by the failure to do more to land him, others will see the sense in not throwing money at a player who is unproven in the Premier League.

Newcastle have been guilty of throwing cash at players in the past. It brought them to the brink of financial meltdown and Kilgallon, for all of his quality in the Championship, was too much of a risk for Chris Hughton at this stage of his reign.

Sunderland have benefited from that and will, if everything goes to plan, get themselves a talented, relatively young defender who offers cover at both centre-back and left-back, which is exactly what Steve Bruce needed this month.

This prudent strategy is sensible in the Championship for Newcastle. It would be better for them to make loan signings if the players they want on a permanent basis are too expensive for them at the moment.

They have got Simpson and if Marlon Harewood returns, with a new centre-back, I'll be relatively happy with the club's business this month.

Let's not forget, they are carrying a wage bill of £40m-a-year in the second tier of English football at the moment, but it cannot be the same if they are promoted.

At the moment, promotion is an if; a maybe. Newcastle have an excellent chance of finishing in the top two, but a run of one win in five, with four draws, is a reminder that there is plenty of work still to be done by the current squad before that dream becomes a reality.

Newcastle will need to spend heavily in the summer if they go up. This hard ball negotiating over wages and fee which almost saw the collapse of the Simpson deal is admirable, but only to an extent.

Newcastle cannot allow their targets to move to rival clubs if this squad is going to be strong enough to survive in the top flight.

If they don't offer the right money and the investment isn't there from Mike Ashley, then Kilgallon and Jermaine Beckford will be the first of many who slip through their fingers and end up elsewhere, clubs Newcastle may well be going head to head with, including Sunderland.