Town have targeted four Sunderland players in a £7 million bid, according to a tabloid report. Daryl Murphy and Nyron Nosworthy are the other players Roy Keane is aiming to land, in addition to Grant Leadbitter and Carlos Edwards.

All four were key players during Keane’s spell at the Stadium of Light and were involved in Monday’s Carling Cup tie at Norwich, which the Blues boss is understood to have attended.

On Monday TWTD reported that Nosworthy, Murphy and Edwards were amongst Keane’s targets, while news of the Blues’ interest in Leadbitter broke this afternoon.

Leadbitter’s PFA representative Matthew Buck has confirmed that a fee for the former England U21 international has been agreed, but as yet there is no clarification on the position regarding the other reported offers.

Nosworthy, who Keane switched from full-back to centre-half, has long been known to be a player the Town manager rates highly, while the Blues and Murphy have been negotiating a move for most of the summer.

Meanwhile, Celtic boss Tony Mowbray has confirmed that his skipper Stephen McManus doesn’t fancy joining Town: "I have no problem with people being interested in our players, but what I would suggest, from my understanding, is Stephen McManus would have no interest in going to Ipswich Town. He is captain of our club and wants to get himself back into our team.”

Photo: Action Images

itfccymru added 00:38 - Aug 27 As much as i rate Leadbitter, not the midfielder we want. We need someone who is as hard as nails and leeds by example in front of the back four, who can hold up the ball and spread it wide to people like Carlos Edwards. Keano as a player/coach sounds alright to me.
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gtd added 00:39 - Aug 27 No, I'm saying that you can't judge them on Sunderland's league position last year... I couldn't give a monkeys if we sign players that are below average for the Premier League. We are in the Championship and our aim is to get promoted. So how good our player are at the moment at Premier League level is irrelevant, we'll address that when we get there shall we?
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campowasgod added 00:51 - Aug 27 Well that would be great but I just think with these four plus the previous four signings we would have a better chance of getting there if the recently found £7m was spent on one or two players of real quality - there are many teams in this league who would not be happy with these four and we have to beat those teams first before we start thinking about the Premiership. My two players would be Welbeck and Gio - I shall go to bed dreaming !!

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gtd added 00:56 - Aug 27 Haha, would love Welbeck but got a slight feeling thats a bit over-ambitious! Have heard from a few sources though that a deal is in place with Spurs whereby if Gio isn't sold by Tuesday he'll come here on loan until January. If everything comes together that'll mean a midfield of Edwards - Leadbitter - Giovani - Martin Damn I love being an optimist.
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02bed03b added 01:22 - Aug 27 we are in no posistion to complain about these players. in keanes championship winning campaign nosworthy was the centre of the sunderland defence and played every game. 10x better than anything at the back. leadbitter is the creative goalscoring midfielder that garvan will never be. Edwards is quility at this level and would walk on walters. people need to take there shiney jonny walters glasses off. he is poo. murphy is terribe

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Ash_TJ added 02:11 - Aug 27 Edwards would be a real coup if we can get him on board ..
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the_egg added 02:32 - Aug 27 One thing's for sure it's a going to be an interesting week!
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superblue121 added 02:49 - Aug 27 I am hoping that this deal does go through, reason being it will strengthen the teams morale and also the performance on match day. It will be a major confidence boost, lets see how everything goes.
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Gooseman1 added 02:52 - Aug 27 hope it gets sorted! need to win Saturday! Cos i cant wait another 14 days for a chance of 3 points ( mbrough) away !!!! may be not even then!
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barnesey added 03:46 - Aug 27 Bet he has to sell Connor Wickham and Owen Garvan to buy them. He'll have sold all our best players and bought a load of duds! Marcus Evans deserves to lose a few more million. Can we have a real Manager please and our Academy back? Please?
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Radlett_blue added 07:15 - Aug 27 "Hmmm...we're not doing very well, are we? Maybe we need a few more players? Hey - Sunderland are playing up the road tonight - perhaps I'll take a look?"
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blues74 added 07:50 - Aug 27 Priskin and Counago will prove to be a good pairing and signing those 4 will be a great addition to our squad.
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ItfcLoyal added 08:03 - Aug 27 Dont Want murphy he isnt going to get us 20 goals and 7 mill where the hell did that come from
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Dogsy40 added 08:11 - Aug 27 gio off to olympiakos on season long loan. reported in daily star. cant understand why harry woulnt loan him to an english club, he could well be a future great at spurs.
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StavangerBlue added 08:11 - Aug 27 I would rather Roy find some new talent rather than helping Nial Quinn cut the wage bill at Sunderland. All we have heard all summer is "Roy Keane linked to [Irish player]" and "Keane to get Sunderland Old Boy"!! Please please please for the love of all things godly can we not get a talented player from somewhere other than Ireland or Sunderland. I'd be happy if he was Japanese, dressed in green and called Murphy Paddy O'Murphy as long as he could (i) score (ii) create a goal every game. I'm just going to put on my green tartan trousers, tarmac my drive, then sip some Irish whiskey and then prepare my Irish stew for this evening. BTW the away kit for next season is a la Celtic...green and white hoops and the badge will be rebranded to green, white and black but we'll be keeping the horse...us Irish love horses!

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SomershamBlue added 08:15 - Aug 27 I think that Moggas comments regarding McManus show just how wild some of the transfer speculation is. Captain of Celtic to move to struggling Championship club - did anyone actually believe that? (Of course he'll change his mind and sign for us now!) On the Garvan discussion, I feel that he either has to play regularly and learn to tackle or move on to another club. My gut feeling is that RK won't tolerate midfielders who shy out of tackles - as Garvan has done so many times to our cost. Don't get me wrong, I know that there are others who are equally reluctant to put their foot in when needed. He is potentially a very good and creative midfielder - but potential does not win matches.

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Guywithpie added 08:15 - Aug 27 Please note: "targeting" and ? in the article and make up your own mind as to the validity of such seculation.
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goldenblueboy added 08:27 - Aug 27 They can't be any worse than what we've got at the moment. Bring them in!
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noitan added 08:47 - Aug 27 Am glad this comes from the Daily Mirror otherwise I would never have believed it.
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jamie22 added 09:00 - Aug 27 For something that couldn't be true we sure do moan a lot don't we? All of them would be great addition to our squad as they were all in Keanes promotion side. I don't care who we sign as long as we get promoted. If we had an Irish 11 and we got promoted who would complain?
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noitan added 09:03 - Aug 27 Couldn't agree more jamie but with the recent track record of the Daily Mirror the odds on all 4 being true are pretty slim.
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BlueFinn added 09:04 - Aug 27 £7m for 4 Sunderland players? That's a lot of money in this league.How would you spend that kind of a sum if you could combine it from the players other Championship clubs have bought. Have a look here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/football-transfers/5494042/Transfers-C Mark Hudson Charlton to Cardiff £1.075m Paul Parry Cardiff to Preston £300,000 Joe Mattock Leicester to WBA £1m David McGoldrick Southampton To Nottingham £1m That's my little effort for a quartet. If promotion can be achieved by bringin in fringe players from premier then so be it but I Ihave my doubts and they are getting bigger every day.

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Gooders7592 added 09:18 - Aug 27 I think we will only Sign Leadbitter and Edwards. Hopefully we get Nosworthy and I really hope we do NOT! get Murphy. Yes we need a striker but not him.
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MarkITFC added 09:25 - Aug 27 GOOD, we need to sign some players , them 4 would be good. Edwards and Leadbitter would be great i dnt know to much about Nyron. We need to try and get these in today or tomoz. so they can play saturday cos we need to start picking up the points.
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Bluroo added 09:25 - Aug 27 Or biggest problem at the moment seems to be creativity. Nobody is thrashing us, infact we were better than Coventry and Palace for large spells - but we're not creating enough goals. I think we have enough good defenders here for Keane to fix that over the next month. What we need is players like Leadbitter and Edwards who will create chances for our strikers.
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