Our friends at Fulhamish have an article up today by Avais Maik arguing that the Whites’ quiet summer is a good thing. Avais puts together a compelling case – and nobody can quibble with the club’s success in securing the services of Luc de Fougerolles, Josh King and Seth Ridgeon – but, as someone who has seen more than a decade of slow starts to transfer windows, I can’t concur with the inference that everything’s rosy in the Motspur Park garden.

I’m not one of those people who wants Tony Khan to splash his family fortune on every big name out there, a la Todd Boehly. And, after watching Martin Jol squander a superb inheritance by signing a whole load of has beens, it is probably wise that we don’t hand over recruitment to a head coach. But I felt that the Whites missed a wonderful opportunity to climb up the top tier last term whilst the likes of West Ham, Spurs and Manchester United – to name just three – languished in the bottom half of the table. Marco Silva made it quite clear towards the end of last season that he was waiting to see whether the Fulham board shared his ambition for the club – and, based on our sole signing being 34 year-old Benjamin Lecomte, you’d have to say the jury’s out.

It is, indeed, progress that the first-team squad doesn’t require serious surgery. Silva’s strongest starting eleven will give anybody a game when everybody is fit, but several positions on the club’s widely-reported summer shopping list remain unfilled. We all agree that the Whites badly need another forward to offer a different option to – or an even a rest for, Raul Jimenez and Rodrigo Muniz. It isn’t easy to attract a third-choice striker and there might be more value out there at the end of the window, but a new arrival would benefit from a full pre-season. We’ve been here before.

Fulham have been linked with a whole of host of wingers, where reinforcements are definitely the order of the day, but the latest developments don’t quicken my pulse. Reiss Nelson looked exciting in his all-too-brief stint in SW6 last term but another loan for an injury-prone player risks repeating what happened in December a year on. Don’t get me started on the idea that Raheem Sterling might be the solution. The suggestion that Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall might do a job on loan in the middle of the park made me wonder we’ve moved on from when our strategy seemed to be ringing Stamford Bridge every day. He’d be better than Ruben Loftus-Cheek ever was, but the former Leicester lad might block the progression of King – or even Ridgeon – into the first team. I hope these are lazy links from journalists influenced by agents and that the imagination that saw us swoop unexpectedly for Joao Palhinha can be called on to garner a gem from the continent instead.

My frustration isn’t helped by the fact that, like many a legacy fan, I’m a little hacked off at how the Fulham decision-makers seem to take the supporters for granted. The ticket prices announced for Manchester United are no longer surprising, nor was the local team terminology that appeared on the Fulham Pier website, but the locking out of fans who had planned to follow the pre-season tour in Portugal raised my heckles. If we’re paying through the nose for the privilege of watching the Whites, the board could at least back the best manager the club’s had in a generation.

Otherwise, Silva might reconsider his swatting away of lucrative job offers. Or, worse, he might not be able to keep conjuring up mid-table finishes with Premier League players who have been cast aside by our peers. Fulham’s first team squad is both small and ageing. We’re told that’s how Marco wanted it, but he also said he’s been planning our summer business since the last window closed in January. Forgive if I doubt that this is what he had in mind.