Chief executive Derek Bowden has revealed that Town are paying a significant proportion of loan signing Giovani Dos Santos's wages during his time at the club. However, he says the Blues did not have to pay a loan fee for the Mexico international, who is at Town until the end of the season.

Bowden told TWTD: "There's no loan fee but we're contributing to his wages. It's a significant proportion.

"We're very pleased we could get him in as quickly as we did. It's part of continually talking to people about possibilities and having a network out there. The initial call was made to John Gorman and we moved quickly.”

The chief executive denied a report claiming that the Blues landed Dos Santos after making an enquiry regarding former striker Darren Bent: "No, I don't know where that came from. The assertion was that we'd gone for Darren Bent and mistakenly took Santos. We weren't going for Darren.”

Supple is one of 13 players out of contract in the summer (Supple, Alex Bruce, Iván Campo, Dan Harding, Chris Casement, Dean Bowditch, Liam Trotter, Kurt Robinson, Matt Richards, Billy Clarke, Tommy Miller, Jai Reason and Ed Upson), but Bowden says there are no plans to bring forward talks regarding new deals with any of them: "We're going to look at all of them in the summer. There's no meeting pencilled in but we'll see when the season ends.

"We're focusing on the season right now and when it's over we'll have a look at the squad. Jim's happy with that and Marcus is happy with that.”

New loan keeper Bartosz Bialkowski will be monitored while he's here but at the moment the Polish U21 international is only considered cover for Supple while he's at Oldham: "Bartosz is with us until the end of the season and clearly we'll have a good look at him.

"John knows him well and Simon Hunt scouted him for Southampton. We'll have a look at him while he's here and he's great cover while Shane is playing games.”

Joe Royle is yet to ask Town about any of his other former players since signing Supple on loan earlier in the week.

Bowden says Iván Campo's Town future is based on the number of matches he begins: "There's a one-way option based on the number of starts. If he makes a certain number of starts, then he'll have a second year.

"If he doesn't make that requisite number of starts, then we could still offer him another year anyway.”

The chief executive says Town have received no further interest in Veliche Shumulikoski: "There's nothing new on Shumi. Preston came in and wanted to take him on loan but we decided we wouldn't loan him to a team we're competing with. He's wants to play football and that's fair, but we wouldn't loan him to a competitor.

"We talked to Watford about a swap but that didn't transpire. The player we were interested in wasn't Adrian Mariappa. We did talk to them briefly about a swap, but they didn't want to do it.”

Bowden also confirmed that assistant manager John Gorman's contract is up in May: "John is contracted until the end of the season and we'll review it at the end of the campaign.”

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