There is a disappointing silence surrounding the giallorosso transfer market, but it has nothing to do with acquiring a much needed bonafide center-forward. It has everything to do with the transfer of ownership.

Over the past year the club has regressed: no Champions League, no funds to seriously bolster the squad, and little reason to believe that Roma will gain significant ground on the scudetto challengers ahead of them, even if the team stays relatively healthy.

Perhaps Roma is now reaping the whirlwind of its success under Franco Sensi. He was a true romanista, and one could say he presided over the team with his heart more than with his head. After splashing out money to bring Fabio Capello, Gabriel Batistuta and Antonio Cassano to the team, the Sensi family finances have suffered. Rosella is not the romanista that her father was. Buying Julio Baptista off of Real Madrid’s bench is not the same thing as buying Gabriel Batistuta in his prime. But who can blame her? She needs to straighten out her family’s fortune.

But she does deserve the blame for allowing 2 deals to collapse on her watch. Especially as details have emerged about last-minute maneuvers to gouge more cash out of George Soros when a deal was in place, there are good reasons for the rank-and-file romanista to view Rosella as the key reason why the team is suffering. She wants to sell; she needs to sell; but she’s prepared to hold out and conduct cut-throat negotiations while the team languishes on the side.

Sadly, the financial woes of the ownership threaten to strike at the very heart of the club. Roma is one of the few teams left in football where many of the team’s best players are prepared to put loyalty and love over lavish paychecks. Who can forget Totti’s declaration that one scudetto with Roma is worth five anywhere else? And players like Mexes and Vucinic have spurned interest from richer clubs simply because they love playing in Rome. But now serious rumors emerge of selling some of the team’s prized jewels, including one of the team’s own youth-system prodigies Alberto Aquilani. It would be a shame if finances lead to a necessary fire-sale of players that represent the heart and soul of the club.

And so as Roma surveys the transfer market there are all the usual needs that scream out for attention – a penalty-box striker, depth at center-back, the need to groom an eventual heir to Totti in the attack. But finding solutions for these positions need to take a back seat to Roma’s biggest current need in the transfer market: finding a new owner.