Striker pose

Boyhood Dreams has arrived back from holiday today and has to cope with the news that seemingly nobody wants to join Hull City.

This isn't a fresh revelation, as anyone who remembers the number of players who turned us down in the 1990s because we were skint and rubbish will attest. However, when you have just stayed in the Premier League by a pipe-cleaner's width and urgently need reinforcements, only to see every viable target thumb their nose your way and hook up with somebody else, it becomes a worry.

But let us not forget that it is still the middle of July and a whole month still separates us from the new season beginning, while a further two weeks can be grafted on before the transfer window closes. During this time, City will begin their pre-season campaign - today, actually - and get some international exposure, complete with new kit, when they go to China for the Barclays Premier Asia trophy.

So far, Michael Owen has decided that Manchester United represents a marginally better option than Hull City; Marc Antoine Fortune has opted for familiarity at Celtic (by hooking up with Tony Mowbray again) rather than competitiveness at the KC Stadium, and Fraizer Campbell, most disappointingly of all, has gone to Sunderland after many weeks of procrastinated talks and whispers about the alleged certainty of his move, on a permanent basis, to the club that gave him a taste of Wembley glory.

Campbell's decision has caused anger among the unintelligent element of local support who keep the moderators busy on unofficial forums, who believe somehow that the player was being disloyal for choosing not to become a full-time Tigers player. Certainly one can feel despondent by Campbell electing to go to Sunderland, but one shouldn't have any fury to vent, nor be surprised. The amount of delay Campbell and his advisory father instilled in the move (initially via his England Under 21 commitments, then a family holiday after England's defeat in the final) was more than enough indication that the player's heart hadn't returned to the KC, and once he said no the binding deal with Manchester United to sell the player only to City was unravelled and Campbell promptly signed for Sunderland, a club with a proven manager, bigger stadium, more money for wages and more to purchase big-name players.

If consolation needs to be proffered, then it comes in the form of an absolute lack of guarantee that Campbell will be any good as a Premier League striker, and given the money that a flush Sunderland have paid and City previously offered, you would expect to purchase a goalscorer from whom a good strike rate was inevitable. Campbell's reputation is still maintained, predominantly, by his immense season with the Tigers in which he scored 15 goals and represented quite easily the most gifted young footballer ever to wear the sacred colours. Since he walked away from Wembley 14 months ago, his career has been about being not quite good enough for Manchester United, a reluctant acquisition for Tottenham Hotspur who, one regime change later, made him feel as necessary at White Hart Lane as he had previously been at Old Trafford thanks to the surge in centre forward purchases which shoved a glum Campbell back down the order.

Sunderland have, therefore, bought a completely unproven player and it may well be that Campbell doesn't even secure himself instant Premier League football when the new campaign kicks off. If he does start the season, he will have to shine quickly as there are ample other marksmen able and waiting to steal his place if the goals don't start coming. While much is made of centre forwards who can graft and contribute, ultimately only goals will win games and secure prizes and security, and Campbell will go to Sunderland under more pressure to score than he ever would have been at the KC. Goodwill alone would have given Campbell settling time with the Tigers but that will be absent entirely from the Stadium of Light.

Perhaps Campbell has gone to Sunderland for that reason; perhaps he is a character who doesn't want to be in a comfort zone, as he has rarely been in one in his career, and certainly never been in one in the Premier League. It would have been easy for him to become a Premier League striker in Hull City colours than it would at any of the 19 other top-flight clubs. Many would argue it would also have been sensible too. But he has made his red-and-white quilted bed, and it will be with interest, without any wish for gleeful posturing, that we wait to see how well he lies in it.

Meanwhile, Bobby Zamora has been on City's radar for a little while now, a striker who has flitted around clubs in his time but his place in history only exists at Brighton & Hove Albion, where his career began and where he is rightly regarded as a demi-god. Since his elevation to the highest level, his reputation has been more about teamwork and selflessness than goalscoring, and while at West Ham United he was unappreciated and at Tottenham Hotspur marginalised, he emerged from last season with credibility within a fine Fulham season, even though goals were rare. This shows the level of centre forward that the game values now - the industrious worker rather than the ruthless finisher, and it's the sort of centre forward City need.

City will never have a prolific centre forward for as long as they are in the top flight, simply because those players are fewer and further between and cost fortunes. The Tigers are chasing two, possibly even three, new strikers who, along with Daniel Cousin and backed by Geovanni and Nick Barmby, might get 15-20 goals between them and be prolific as an entity rather than an individual. Zamora is as good a target to start with as any.