Last season was great for Cardiff City, reaching the FA Cup Final for the first time in 81 years, only to suffer disappointment at the hands of Portsmouth. But the Premier League dream failed to become a reality again and with another summer of losing the club’s best players, the new season could well be more of the same.

I’m worried by the amount of players heading out of the door and nobody coming in so far this summer. Dave Jones has lost Robbie Fowler to Blackburn Rovers and Aaron Ramsey to Arsenal, the relationship with Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink has gone wrong over a contract dispute. And with the debt mounting for the building of the new stadium, it’s an increasingly worrying state of affairs.

A deal seemingly struck to bring Charlton striker Marcus Bent to Ninian Park also went wrong as he announced he was going to Birmingham City, further signs that not everything is going to plan despite the messages to the contrary from chairman Peter Ridsdale.

Now defender Glenn Loovens seems set for a move to Rangers, with the Scottish giants possibly offering Daniel Cousin in exchange. That might not be too bad an exchange, but all we have to show from the transfer market is Irish midfielder Mark Kennedy signed from Crystal Palace on a free and Scottish youngster Ross McCormack from Motherwell, also on a free.

Considering we got £5m for Ramsey and picked up a tidy bit of cash from the FA Cup run, why are we not paying for better players? I’ve heard rumours of Leicester’s DJ Campbell coming for around £1.5m and a loan deal for Bolton’s Heidar Helguson, but other than that everything is quiet on the transfer front. There is the problem with having to pay off the debts, but we can’t go every season selling our best players and then scrounge in some half-decent freebies from other Championship clubs. That’s not going to get us into the Premier League any time soon.

Almost everyone in the country had a good laugh when they saw Ridsdale was taking over at Cardiff after what he did at Leeds - and in a year when we had operating losses of £5m, he still found the money to pay himself over £1m, including a £500,000 bonus for successfully renegotiating the size and terms of the loan notes and achieving unconditionality on the new stadium project.

Ridsdale might have invested the bonus back into the club but he seems more bothered about getting the stadium built than the team’s fortunes on the pitch. What good’s a half-full brand-new stadium if we’re playing in League One with more debt than some Premier League clubs?

Presently, we have just 22 players with squad numbers, and while we might just be able to cope in defence if we can hang on to Loovens, it’s up front where we have the problems. Steve Thompson, McCormack and Paul Parry aren’t going to be able to play a full 46-game season and do the job. We need a 20-goal a season striker who isn’t going to cost the earth.

The dream is there, the new stadium on its way, and once completed it might help bring in more revenue through naming rights and increased attendances. But the important thing is securing a company to give us millions to name the stadium if we’re to have any hope of clearing off the debt owed, which stands at around £35m.

On the pitch, however, I really can’t see us doing any better than just outside the play-offs - unless Ridsdale starts investing in quality strikers to get us into play-offs and maybe go one better. I’d be happy to see us spend a year in the Premier League to grab all of the money available, with a modest team that isn’t costing the earth, and come back down the following May. It would be worth it if it gives us a chance of mounting a realistic chance the next time on a more sound financial footing.

Unlike our Championship rivals, who can splash the cash when needed, we have almost nothing to play with. And if it continues for another five years, it could cripple us as a club while Roberto Martinez and his Swansea boys from along the M4 overtake us as the No.1 club in Wales. What a pleasant thought going into the new season.