Boss Roy Keane says he hasn’t given up on summer signings Tamás Priskin and Lee Martin despite the pair’s poor showing during their first season at Portman Road. Priskin, a £1.7 million acquisition from Watford is currently on loan at QPR, while Martin, signed for a fee understood to be approaching £2 million from Manchester United, has only fleetingly been involved in the second half of the season.
Keane said: "We paid decent money for Lee Martin and Tamás Priskin and the frustrating thing is that they’re the two boys that it hasn’t worked out for yet.
"Tamás is coming back and I spoke with Lee and he knows how I feel and that he probably should have done better. Lee knows that himself. Players are intelligent people and they’ll know that they need to do better.”
The Blues boss says he will speak with the Hungarian striker when he returns from his loan spell at Loftus Road: "I’ll be having a chat with Tamás this week and I’ll see where his mindset is because you want players who want to be here and want to do well.
"They’re good players, it’s not worked out for them yet but it doesn’t mean they aren’t as talented as when they walked through the door.
"But to help them along, we need one or two more experienced players in the right positions at the club to help these boys.”
Keane says most of his summer money will be spent on finding players to put the ball in the net, Town’s most significant failing this season: "I think we will have to throw money at it in terms of the attacking players, I think you always have to.
"But it’s not only about spending, there are clubs out there who have had good seasons — Blackpool, Leicester — they’ve not exactly spent a fortune, so it can be done.
"We’re short in terms of the attacking players and goalscoring threat and that’s where we’ll have to invest.
"In terms of the other positions where I think we need experience, I think there are players out there without spending fortunes.”
Despite the poor season, supporters for the most part still back the Town boss, although Keane says he is aware of one or two dissenting voices: "The fans have been good to me so far, most of them. There’s one or two that stand behind the dug-out, I could do with getting them moved, and they might get moved!
"But you can’t please everybody and I understand 100% the frustration of supporters. Do you not think we get frustrated? Do you not think that we go back as staff and players and analyse games over cups of tea and packs of Ginger Nuts? We discuss it all day.”
Meanwhile, the Irish Times also interviewed Keane at length when he was back home on Thursday, a piece in which he talks about his concerns regarding Irish players and alcohol.