Transfer windows come and go these days, but the wheeling and dealing to be done over the next three weeks could have huge consequences for Welsh football.

By the end of this season Wales could have a Premiership club to call its own for the very first time, another in its highest league position for more than 20 years and see the other drop out of the league altogether.

This looks set to be a make or break period for each of the ‘big three’ of Cardiff, Swansea and Wrexham.

And if you don’t think it is as serious as all that then it’s time to think again.

The Bluebirds have fallen badly off the promotion race in the past two months but are still in there with a fighters’ chance due to their record breaking burst out of the blocks.

In recent weeks the side have looked as if they are running on empty in terms of both energy and ideas and manager Dave Jones is determined to take action.

But having worked miracles during the summer with some of his transfer coups, Jones has given himself something of a tough act to follow.

Fans now expect him to conjure up another Michael Chopra, Kerrea Gilbert or Kevin McNaughton out of nowhere.

But if he can pull off the same trick again then who would back against Cardiff at least reaching the play-offs in a season where mid-table would have been seen as a wholly acceptable achievement back in August.

A cup win against today’s illustrious opponents Tottenham would do no harm either as Jones admits the club is a tough sell to prospective recruits.

He and all of his purchases to date have bought into the dream of what the club could be in the future. But it takes a massive leap of faith for all concerned when you have no training ground to call your own and a dilapidated home like Ninian Park with which to lure, or more likely deter, players.

Mid-season recruits do not always do the trick though. Steve Thompson and Riccy Scimeca arrived this time last year. And while Scimeca in particular has been outstanding for much of this season there were many fans unsure about the signings in the final few months of the last campaign.

Jones may be determined to bring in two or three new faces to pep up his squad but his eagerness to move in the market pales beside that of an increasingly desperate Wrexham boss Denis Smith right now.

This season was supposed to be all sweetness and roses after Wales’ oldest professional side emerged from the financial uncertainty of administration just in time to kick off the new campaign.

Unfortunately what started as a tremendous season has imploded to the point where Wrexham now occupy a perilous position just two points above the relegation zone.

This was not how the story was supposed to unfold and Smith is still talking optimistically of the play-offs.

For the time being though he is just struggling to put a side of any description out on the pitch and even tried to have last Saturday’s clash with Hereford postponed due to a lack of fit bodies.
Smith needs to find a solution and quickly.

He has always had a eye for a player, just ask City skipper Darren Purse who he nurtured at Oxford along with future Premiership defender Matt Elliott.

But then Smith will always insist that it is not hard to spot a ‘player’.

The trick is often being in the right place at the right time as Jones’ capture of Chopra from Newcastle illustrated in the summer.

Another day or two and Michael Owen’s World Cup ending injury in Germany would have put paid to the deal.

Two seasons ago Smith himself plucked unknown goalkeeper Ben Foster out of Stoke’s reserves. A few months later he was a Manchester United player and last summer was on standby for England’s World Cup squad.

More recently Matt Derbyshire banged in the goals for Smith during a highly successful loan spell. Last weekend he scored his first Premiership goal for Blackburn Rovers.

The one manager out of the Welsh musketeers who appears to have struggled the most when it comes to transfers is Swansea’s Kenny Jackett.

Compared to Jones and Smith he is still a managerial pup but with enough financial clout to out muscle most of his League One rivals and probably plenty of Championship ones as well.

The impressive 20,000 Liberty Stadium certainly aids his cause as well but even after splashing out close on £1m last January, Jackett proved that money does not always buy happiness, or in this case promotion.

The Swans missed out in the end only by a penalty shoot-out at the Millennium Stadium but of Jackett’s five signings this time last year, four have still to prove themselves and the one success on the field, Leon Knight, is on his way out of the club for what he does off it.

Managers at all levels eventually live and die in the job according to what they do in the transfer market.

It’s just that some transfer windows are more important than others.

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