The chairman missed out on four deals on the final day of the last transfer window, and Roeder must wonder what he has to do to get Fat Fred to cough up some money.
The Newcastle United boss was without 14 first team squad players on Saturday; he gave Shepherd his shopping list five weeks ago; Shepherd said back in October "we cannot wait for January to bring in new players" ... and STILL we wait for action!
The FA Cup has started so any Premiership target is now cup-tied. What is going on at St James' Park?
Defenders are United's immediate priority but Shepherd is now talking of bringing in a couple on loan, then the money could be there for a striker.
Roeder: "In the free world we all cherish and live in you should be able to buy and sell whenever you want. You can only buy in January or after the last game of the season until September 1. I can't see the benefit.
"It doesn't do much good for prices, because it drives them up, as Mourinho said recently.
"We're in the market looking but I think there will be plenty of Premiership clubs who are not. I think we'll be surprised by how many Premiership clubs don't spend any money at all in the window, because they don't have money, and possibly because there isn't a lot out there.
"Clubs don't want to lose their best players at this time and there aren't a lot of top players going into the last four months of their contracts. The search goes on. We've only just started to see what we can do about squeezing one or two players out of clubs that will make us better and be players I'm going to be happy with for the next three and a half years."