Fulham chief executive Jim Hone says the club are in advanced discussions with a number of transfer targets as Chris Coleman looks to strengthen his squad for the forthcoming campaign.

Hone has distanced Fulham from tabloid speculation linking them with a move to bring veteran striker Gabriel Batistuta to Craven Cottage.

“We’re in well advanced discussions with a number of clubs and a number of players. It would be quite wrong and unprofessional of me to name any names. But I don’t agree that one of those names will be Gabriel Batistuta. He was, and perhaps still is, a great player but I don’t think he’s a player that will either be coming here or that we’d be building a future on.

However, there are going to be some name players coming. There’s going to be a minimum of three additional players bought plus a replacement for Sean Davis. Sean was a popular, home-grown player who we never wanted to lose. We made a massive offer to keep him with the Club but for his own reasons, he wanted to move on. He had 12 months remaining on his existing contract but he indicated that he wasn’t prepared to sign a new deal.

In these situations the deal that the acquiring club gets is always a good one. The deal you get as the selling club is never as good as you would want because the player’s value radically drops in the last 18 months of his contract. The view that Chris and I took was that we were far better off having players who wanted to be at the Club. Had we been able to hold on to Sean under a new contract we would have all been delighted – but it wasn’t to be.

We all had a duty to the team, the supporters and the business to make the best out of it – and as we did with the Louis Saha situation, we drove the best possible deal. All of those funds are going to be ploughed back in to developing this team. Last season was absolutely terrific for us and we’re looking to build on that. We’re all conscious that we’re not going to progress by releasing good players and not replacing them.”