Oxford United’s summer is increasingly being defined by what the club cannot do rather than what it can.

The registration embargo has already prevented the sort of squad reshaping that would normally follow relegation, but the concern now extends beyond recruitment. The longer the restrictions remain in place, the harder it becomes to separate the football decisions from the financial ones, particularly when interest starts to emerge in players Oxford would otherwise want to keep.

That is why the latest speculation around Stanley Mills feels so significant. Preston North End are reportedly pushing to complete a deal, with figures of a little over £2m plus add-ons being suggested, and that looks extremely light if Oxford are serious about challenging towards the top end of League One. Mills is exactly the sort of player they should be building around, and selling him for a fee that does not fundamentally change the club’s position would weaken a squad that currently has very limited means of replacing him.

There is, of course, another side to it. Nobody outside the club can know exactly how urgent the financial situation is, and that has to be part of the calculation. If the board are confident that the embargo will be lifted in January through further investment, then holding onto one of their better assets makes obvious sense. If there is uncertainty over whether that money will actually arrive, then a sale becomes easier to understand, particularly when the alternative might be watching a player’s value decline as he moves closer to the end of his contract.

That still does not make £2m suddenly attractive. There is a difference between recognising the realities of the market and accepting an offer that appears to undervalue one of the strongest assets in the squad. If Preston want Mills badly enough, Oxford should be making them pay a fee that reflects not only the player himself, but also the damage caused by losing him at a time when bringing in a proper replacement may be impossible.

The deeper problem is the lack of clarity surrounding almost every aspect of the situation. Supporters are being asked to believe that the embargo can be resolved, that key players can be retained and that the club can still compete strongly this season, yet there remains considerable uncertainty over how those things fit together. Confidence is damaged much more quickly when there is no obvious sense of what the plan actually is.

Oxford can point to the regulations and argue, with some justification, that the rules have created an unusually difficult situation. The PFA’s legal challenge to elements of League One’s financial framework adds another layer of uncertainty, and there is a legitimate debate to be had over whether the restrictions are fair or proportionate. Even so, none of that completely removes responsibility from the club itself, because Oxford still created the financial circumstances in which those regulations became relevant in the first place.

That is where recruitment also comes under scrutiny. There have been successes, and it would be unfair to pretend otherwise, particularly with players whose values have risen significantly after arriving from lower divisions or development football. The problem has come when signings have not worked, because too many have proved difficult to move on due to wages, contract length or a lack of interest elsewhere. Some have ended up on repeated loans while Oxford have continued carrying part of the financial burden, which is exactly the sort of issue that becomes far more serious once spending restrictions arrive.

Good recruitment is not simply about identifying talented players. It is also about building a squad where mistakes can be corrected without leaving expensive contracts hanging around for years, and Oxford’s current position suggests that process has not always been handled well enough. When a club is spending heavily relative to its income, every unsuccessful deal has a much bigger knock-on effect, and the embargo has exposed some of those weaknesses in a particularly unforgiving way.

The current situation also creates an obvious contradiction. Oxford need their best players if promotion is the ambition, but promotion becomes harder when the squad cannot be strengthened, and selling one of those better players only makes that task more difficult. Suggestions that departures could somehow open the door to free loans or other limited additions do not offer much comfort while the precise restrictions remain unclear, because no sensible squad plan should depend on technicalities that may or may not apply.

The safest assumption has to be that anyone who leaves cannot be replaced adequately until the club knows otherwise. That should make the asking price for Mills significantly higher, because Oxford are not simply selling a player in a normal transfer market. They would be removing quality from a side already short of flexibility, and any fee should compensate them for that wider cost as well.

There is still enough ability in the squad to make this season competitive. A poor League Cup performance against Leyton Orient should not suddenly define the campaign, particularly this early, and there are players within the group who have already shown they can perform at a higher level than League One. New ideas will also need time to settle, so writing the season off before it has properly begun would be every bit as premature as pretending there are no serious concerns.

The difficulty is that every positive currently seems to come with a qualification. Oxford have good players, but may have to sell them. They have a squad capable of competing, but cannot currently strengthen it in the normal way. They hope the embargo will be resolved, but there is still uncertainty around exactly how and when that happens, and that lack of certainty is becoming the defining feature of the summer.

Keeping Mills would at least provide one clear sign that the club intends to protect the quality it already has. Selling him cheaply while unable to replace him would feel like another problem created in the process of trying to solve the last one, and Oxford are already carrying enough of those.