Boss Roy Keane has set his sights on another loan target after the player he chasing at the end of last week decided to remain with his Premier League club. Keane is looking for two additions to his squad, but is currently only making progress on one front.
Keane said: "As I said last week, there was a long way to go and the player we wanted to get permission to speak to didn’t want to come, he wanted to stay and fight for his place at a Premiership club.
"I can understand that 100% and that’s the way it is. We’ll keep pushing hard to try and strengthen the squad. We’re looking at someone else, but there’s a long way to go with that deal as well.
"Some of these players have spent a long time trying to get into the Premiership or have been playing in the Premiership for a long time and are very reluctant to drop into the Championship, and that’s something I understand 100%.
"We’ll continue to make progress, I’ve been in contact with the managers and they've said they’d let me know how things are going. We have to respect the managers and the players. We can’t drag players down here if they don’t want to come.”
Keane admits making headway on the loan front has proved difficult: "The progress we were hoping to make was in one of the positions and we’ve hit a few brick walls in terms of the other position.
"If I told you the position, it’s clearly a tough position to improve and there’s not that many players out there, believe it or not. Premiership clubs don’t want to do anything and teams in the Championship don’t want to do deals with other Championship clubs.
"We’ve made no progress on one of the positions, but we’re hoping on the other that we might get feedback next week, but it’s a big if.”
Keane says he knows nothing of the reported Derby County interest in Jon Stead but wouldn’t be shocked if an offer came in for the out-of-favour striker: "There’s nothing that I’m aware of, but when you leave out a good player like Steady it wouldn't surprise me if there were enquiries for him.
"I think there might have been one or two calls to the chief executive. If clubs want to make an offer, they’ll make an offer.
"There are no impending loans out, but that could change in the next hour, that’s the business we’re in. I might see you tomorrow and we’ll have had a few enquiries today. That’s the way it goes.”
Town have no new injury concerns ahead of Tuesday's home game against Watford with Carlos Edwards coming back into Keane's thinking after being rested at the weekend.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Aldeburgh Kevin Webster says he is unaware of complaints being made regarding the noise being made by Roy Keane’s dogs, as was reported over the weekend: "I have not heard of any problems whatsoever.
”The town council has not received any complaints so the only thing I can think is a complaint may have been made to Suffolk Coastal. I think it has been blown out of proportion, we are not aware of any problems.”
Elsewhere, former Town loanee Giovani Dos Santos has been linked with a January move from Spurs to Portsmouth.