I can’t say I’m awfully excited to see board members fuelling transfer speculation.

Chief Executive Don Bircham has been talking to The Leader about what might happen in January, but I’d rather not find out until it happened! Maybe this is because I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t want to know the score before I watch “Match of the Day”, but the main reason it makes me uneasy is that the best deals are done in private.

Bircham is protected by the article, which says he wouldn’t reveal transfer targets, but he then goes on to speculate on a couple of potential signings. Andy Bishop comes up first, and the comment on him is surprising, as it seems to reveal the club’s less than eager to renew its interst in the striker.

“Andy has come on our radar because he did well for us but there is a new management team who recalled him and he has had one or two injuries which might mean that interest is diminishing.”

For me, that’s raising the curtain a little more than the club ought to.

Danny Rose is brought up too, with just makes me sigh really.

My understanding of that saga is the deal to bring him to The Racecourse was fatally compromised by the fact that it was made public. When the proper, discreet hard work was getting done behind the scenes by the likes of Andy Morrell it looked like it would go through, but once Rose’s availability was put in the public domain other clubs were alerted and a scramble for his services began.

Rose might well have been happy to make what, in essence, was a sideways move to us when we were the only game in town. Once clubs from higher divisions got involved, we were never likely to get him.

I just don’t understand the urge to comment on transfer speculation. It’s like when people try to post transfer news on Red Passion in the hope that it will make them look like they’re in the know. If you’re on the board you should be in the know, and not feel you have to prove it. Okay, he might have been asked specifically about Rose and Bishop, but there was no reason to answer the question; it wasn’t a live TV interview, after all!

I know Richie Williams well – he’s a sound, honest guy who has the best interests of Wrexham at heart: if he was told that they were questions Bircham didn’t want to answer as it would compromise our efforts to bring players in, there’s no question that Richie would have respected that.

Such talk also offers up hostages to fortune. By saying Morrell has a budget he can exploit, Bircham puts his manager in an invidious position. If Morrell decides the right players aren’t available and opts not to waste his money bringing players in for the sake of it, which in the circumstances would be the right thing to do, he’d have been set up for criticism by the public announcement that he has a budget.

To be fair, Bircham does say that Morrell shouldn’t jump in and buy for the sake of it, but if we stutter in the run-in having not brought in fresh players, the fact that it’s now public knowledge that money was available will surely be used against him by the fans.

Also, if a player’s agent is negotiating a contract with us now (let’s call this imaginary player Hay Jarris) and sees a story in the paper saying Morrell’s operating within his budget, he might just be inclined to push for a bigger share of what’s left in the pot: if he didn’t he’d hardly be representing his client well.

We’re a fan-run club now, and it’s in our interest to project that in many fields. However, the execution of our transfer policy is not one of those fields. Andy Morrell is a smart guy who knows how to play his cards close to his chest. Furthermore, he’s addressed any doubts about his ability to work the transfer market with some shrewd signings. Can’t we just leave him and Billy Barr to it?