Gary Rowell: New signings won't have same impact as last January's

Even before the window had opened, the club warned us not to expect too much and on that score they were true to their word.

I certainly can’t see Joleon Lescott, Darron Gibson and Bryan Oviedo having the same impact as Wahbi Khazri, Lamine Kone and Jan Kirchhoff did, but saying that Oviedo had a tremendous debut at Palace and with Patrick van Aanholt leaving and Sunderland receiving top dollar for him, that could turn out to be shrewd business.

The big disappointment though was the one that got away, Leicester’s Leonardo Ulloa, who had been linked with Sunderland from day one of the window, which made it even more disappointing that it dragged on right to the line then ended in failure.

I can’t help feel Leicester played us – why didn’t we set a deadline with a few days to go rather than a few hours, as then at least you can go for your back-up option.

Some have said we didn’t need to waste money on a poor second choice but why must the second choice be poor?

I doubt many clubs got their first targets but they will all have a wishlist with second or third options – after all, Victor Anichebe certainly wasn’t first choice but did a job until his injury.

It is frustrating that even when we know there are limited funds available, a large chunk of it didn’t get spent with the £8million Ulloa deal collapsing so late.