Andy Payton column

YOU have to speculate to accumulate, as the saying goes.

And now it's desperately important that we spend to try and make our Premier League dream come true.

I've never known a Championship to be as wide open as this one is and the beauty of it is that anyone of about 15 clubs can come out of the chasing pack and stake a real claim for a play-off spot.

That's why I'm a little bit frustrated that we're halfway through the January transfer window and the only signing we've made is Stanislav Varga on a month's loan.

The only thing we've really heard is that Charlton Athletic are preparing a bid for Andy Gray - and that's the total opposite of what we want to hear.

You can't sell your top scorer halfway through the season if you have any ambition of playing in the Premier League.

We need to be looking to spend a bit of cash in this period to try and get ourselves up.

As it stands, we're four points away from the play-offs - and that's after a bit of a rocky patch - and the right investment could be the difference between the play-offs and another season in the Championship.

When Brendan Flood took over, I assumed we would have more financial clout in the transfer market, but we haven't seen evidence of that yet.

Our record transfer is still £1million, we've paid for Ian Moore and Robbie Blake many years ago, and we've got to break that if we want to give ourselves the best possible chance.

I've mentioned in the past that we need to be looking at the younger end of the market. I think we should have gone for Jason Koumas, who I believe Rovers are after now, a few years ago and maybe that ship has sailed but that's the calibre of player we should be looking at.

Richard Chaplow was one name that was mentioned and I'm not overly disappointed that we didn't make a bid.

They always say that you should never go back and although Chappy did well for us when he was here before, there's no guarantee he would again.

It's a bit of a mystery why he didn't make the grade at West Bromwich Albion but I guess only time will tell whether we've missed out there.

But now is the time to grasp the nettle and show the fans that the club wants to play Premier League football.

I know that money mustn't be wasted, but money spent now can pay massive dividends come the end of the season.

Owen Coyle has done well so far. He's finally broken the home hoodoo with the win over Plymouth, but now he must really earn his money and buy the right players to get us into the play-off picture.

It's make or break time for our season.