"It's worrying" - Newcastle United transfer situation could affect Coventry City and Jack Rudoni | OneFootball

There are just over three weeks left until the window shuts.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

Coventry City are heading into the new season with quite a bit of optimism, after their crushing play-off experience last season.

So far this summer, Frank Lampard has been able to hold onto almost all of his best players. A couple of nice additions have been made and more could be to come, with the likes of Hull City centre-back Charlie Hughes being linked with the club. They had bids of £4 million and £7 million rejected for the 21-year-old, as per Hull Live.

There are some concerns, though, for one of Football League World's Coventry fan pundits, Chris Deez. He is worried that, with a decent amount of time left in the transfer window, some of those top talents currently available to Lampard won't be there by the end of it.

On Thursday, it was revealed that star midfielder Jack Rudoni was the subject of a rejected bid from Southampton.

Coventry City's main summer transfer window fears laid out

"I've got two main fears for the rest of this transfer window, which we've only got just about three weeks left of now," Deez stated.

"Every day we're seeing Newcastle get turned down by a new player, and that makes me worried that they're really going to bust a gut to try and sign Jack Rudoni, who they'd been quite heavily linked with earlier in the window.

"We'd absolutely get good money for him, I think anywhere upwards of £20 million, which would be incredible, considering we spent about £5 million on him from Huddersfield [Town]. But how much time will we have left to potentially spend that money and replace our best and most important player?

"The other issue, the other fear for me, is that we still don't have a good enough striker.

"Ellis Simms is the only player that I've actively hated while they've still played for Coventry. [Brandon] Thomas-Asante is only narrowly better than Simms, and really, the only thing that separates them is that Thomas-Assante actually works a bit harder for the ball. He just doesn't know what to do with it when he's got it.

"I fear that because they both scored a goal against St Pauli in our final pre-season game, I'm really worried that's made Lampard think, yep, cool, I've got two goalscorers there. We'll just start the season with them.

"We keep getting linked with random midfielders that we don't particularly need because we've got a really strong midfield already. We're now finally being linked with more defenders that we do need to replace the outgoing [Luis] Binks and possibly [Milan] van Ewijk. We're just not being linked with any strikers, and it's baffling, and it's confusing, and it's worrying.

"There are so many good seasoned Championship-experienced strikers out there, like Oli McBurnie is the one that jumps out first. [He's] available on a free and I don't know why we're not pursuing players like that.

"[He's] a little bit older than the options that we've already got, but [he's got] Championship experience, a consistent goalscorer at this level. It just, it baffles and boggles the mind."

A top striker won't guarantee Coventry promotion, but it would help them in key situations

Coventry's need for a centre-forward is probably the biggest issue that they'd surely like to address before the window shuts on 1st September.

Providing any massive sales don't go through, the Sky Blues should be pretty happy with the kit that they have in their toolbox. It is just that number nine spot that doesn't quite match up to the quality of the rest of the team.

They proved last season, through Rudoni, Haji Wright and others, that they don't have to rely on a striker to get them goals. But what happens, in games like the ones that they played against Sunderland in the play-offs, when you're struggling for ideas, and you need a bit of magic to get you on the scoresheet?

That's where having an effective striker could be so key to this side's promotion hopes.