SAM Allardyce, who is once again having to react to a situation rather than being pro-active in the transfer market, knows he has no option in the current financial climate but to take the loan and short-term contract route as he searches for reinforcements.

But he fears he may not always be able to come up with the goods and says, sooner or later, his directors will have to start paying transfer fees.

"It's all we can do at the moment," he accepts. "If they haven't got the money, they haven't got the money. Nothing changes and you just have to live with it. You don't accept it but you live with it and you hope that one day, if you continue to have success, it will change. But there is no doubt about it, there will be some time when you can't find a player for nothing because he won't be available and when that time comes we will have to find the funds to do a bit of both.

"At the moment we're taking advantage of a skint game. Had the game not been skint, we would never have had the money, under our circumstances, to compete with anybody else.

"And that would be our downfall. At the moment we are riding on the back of a skint game. While other teams have struggled with cash flow, it's given us an opportunity to compete because we've done our business shrewdly.

"We've got ourselves in a in a position to be very good in the Premiership but the warnings are that Blackburn had five first teamers out and we've only won the game 4-3.

"Danger signs ring out when that happens."