Wolves' Championship Manager

It's like a real-life version of Fantasy Football.

You've got your multi-million pound budget, you hand-pick your favourite players for your team, then you sit back and watch the results flow. Sounds easy doesn't it?

Er, well not quite, not in the real world anyway.

Wolves boss Mick McCarthy is playing Fantasy Football for real this summer and it's as far removed from the fun newspaper version as can be imagined.

Extortionate, eye-popping fees, cash-heavy signing-ons and inflated egos to boot. And that's just the agents.

Signing the right players for the right money is an exhausting business, both on the patience and the pocket – not to mention the air miles, which McCarthy has been steadily totting up recently.

Scouring Europe for signings to strengthen his squad, the hardworking Molineux chief has been putting the time since achieving promotion to good use.

As well he might too, for he only needs look a lot closer to home to see there are plenty of pitfalls looming.

By anyone's standards, McCarthy has a good track record at recruitment so far.

Michael Kightly for £25,000, Karl Henry for £100,000, Sylvan Ebanks-Blake for £1.5million, Stephen Ward for £150,000, Chris Iwelumo for £400,000, Kevin Foley for £750,000 – you can't argue with such value for money.

A modest investment has brought the ultimate prize at a fraction of the cost Dave Jones achieved it with six years before.

But in winning promotion to the mega-bucks Premier League, McCarthy is entering a new stratosphere, where the bargains and margins for error aren't nearly so plentiful, and the stakes are much higher.

Down the road at Albion, Baggies chief Tony Mowbray has found to his cost that the men you entrust your faith in can also be your undoing, as a lack of top flight cost them dear.

Albion spent £21million-plus in transfer fees last summer, but you would be hard pushed to say Scott Carson at £3.25million, Borja Valero for a club record £4.7million, Gianni Zuiverloon for £3.2million, with Roman Bednar and Luke Moore at a combined £5.3million, have given value for money.

The Baggies will also struggle to get their money back on Abdoulaye Meite at £1.8million and Marek Cech £1.4million.

Albion's top earners are on £22-23,000 a week in the Premier League, but it's significant that Stoke have guaranteed their top flight safety paying people such as a rejuvenated James Beattie £30,000 a week.

That's the ball park Wolves are considering entering. It's my reckoning that Wolves may actually spend less on fees than the Baggies, but maybe gamble more on wages to guarantee extra Premier League quality.

Wolves have already been linked with around 30 players already this summer, six of which have been discounted by the club, or the teams they play for.

It's fair to say that number of supposed targets will more than treble by the time the big kick off comes around on August 15.

So, who's realistically going to come to Wolves?

Well, we can probably forget about the top and even middle-ranking established stars up for grabs this summer.

Included in that list are Manchester United striker Carlos Tevez and Bosmans such as Newcastle's Michael Owen and Portsmouth's Sol Campbell, who might be free of transfers fees, but will demand the "tens of thousands of pounds a week" McCarthy won't pay.

But there are other, more realistic targets which could be of much better value for money than the big names, including the loan market, which could offer the likes of Nancy's on-loan Albion forward Marc-Antoine Fortune and Manchester United striker Fraizer Campbell.

In his three years at Wolves – and in his time at Sunderland – McCarthy has enjoyed the best returns from those plucked from the same division or lower.

This is where he has to marry his past and future central planks of recruitment.

For while his well-established scouting system of unearthing unheard-of gems has proved hugely successful, he has spoken on numerous occasions of the need to strengthen with Premier League players.

So, with that in mind, maybe we can expect a mix of the best of the Championship and a sprinkling from the top flight.