Alan Irvine has moved to quash any of the recent media transfer speculation linking North End with a whole host of players.

With 'silly season' just around the corner, local newspapers, radio stations and online sources have already drawn up a list of players reportedly heading for a summer move to Deepdale.

But the PNE Gaffer has explained that he would rather have deals signed and sealed before anything is announced due to the nature of today's transfer market.

Speaking to Whites World, Irvine said: "There is always a great deal of speculation and at this time there's not a lot of football to write about so the football writers have to find something. That leads to a lot of people guessing and it seems that Owen Coyle and I are linked with every Scottish player every weekend in the Sunday papers.

"I've been linked with players that I haven't seen play before and obviously that's just not right. That's the nature of football these days and I accept that but I'm certainly not going to start commenting on all of these things because all it does is make a story.

"Really, I only want to speak about bringing players in once those players have come in as it's very difficult these days to get deals done. In the past, deals were done very quickly, it was manager to manager and the first thing everybody knew about it was when the job was done and the forms were signed.

"Nowadays there are so many people involved. There might be even more than one agent, there are chief executives and chairmen involved, the managers will be involved to some extent and it's just an amazing number of people who are involved.

"That leads to potential problems and obviously we don't want that. When we go in to sign a player, we want to go in and do the work quickly, get the player signed and then announce it."

Irvine did explain that his summer scouting mission has already started, but he doesn't want to sign players simply for the sake of doing so.

The North End board parted with over £2m to bring in four new players in the January transfer window.

And Irvine is hoping for similar financial help this summer, but is fully aware that he must be realistic with potential acquisitions.

He added: "First and foremost, I don't think it is great to go out talking about all these players in all these positions because it undermines the players that you have at the Club at the time. If you are a midfield player and you hear that I'm looking for another midfield player, then clearly it is going to be upsetting and worrying.

"I'd rather not be talking in those kind of terms. I don't really want to tell people where I go to watch games because I don't want everyone to be aware of what I'm doing until it's done. As I have said already, there are too many things that can go wrong because of the number of people that are involved in deals these days, so the closer you can keep the cards to your chest then the better.

"I'm working very hard. I've been abroad watching games and I've been in this country watching games and I'll continue to do that as long as I think there are targets there that will strengthen our squad. It could be that all of that work is done and we don't sign any of the players that I happen to have seen. It's a lot better to simply make the announcement after the deal has been done.

"Obviously I have to be realistic in terms of the players that I identify but that's certainly the way it has got to work here. I've got to look for players who I think can do a job and that can improve things here but I've got to do that in a realistic manner.

"I can't be looking at £10m players - there's no point in me doing that. I have to look at players that fall within the transfer budget and wage constraints that we have at this Club. There's no point at me looking at players who want £15,000 a week because we don't pay that and if we did then we would have all sorts of problems with all the other players.

"I will be realistic with what I ask the board to do and hopefully they will be able to help. If they can't then we move onto another target but I don't want to buy players for the sake of it."

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