Boss Roy Keane will aim to sign as many of his summer targets as possible before pre-season training starts on June 28th but says it’s not always possible to get deals done early in the summer transfer window. The Town manager is looking to sign four or five new players while moving on a number of his first team squad.
Keane says that ideally he’d like the new players at the club in time for the start of Town’s pre-season preparations but says he has learned from previous years that this doesn’t always happen: "I’d like to, of course, but I’m pretty sure I won’t. I think every club is the same.
"I’ll think what you’ll find over the next few months is that negotiations drag out and, you might laugh at this, but chief executives go away, players go on their holidays, you think you can set medicals up, but it’s very, very difficult. I tried it last year, I tried it the year before, so there has to be an element of patience."
Keane says his priority is landing his targets who will be available on free transfers: "What we can try and do is finalise the players whose contracts are up. We’d like to get them tied up as quickly as possible and there might be one or two in the four or five I’m interested in.
"Then again, these players will have options and they’ll want to have a family holiday and will be having a good think about their future.
"I’d be very surprised if anything happened in the next two or three weeks, but we’d like them in by 28th June, certainly one or two players. But let’s wait and see.”
The Blues boss says that deals involving players who are still contracted to their clubs may be held up while their current sides look to bring in their own targets: "Their managers might be waiting to get one or two in before they move them out. Some people are waiting to sell before they can bring somebody in, and we also have the issue of moving players on.
"We’ve got a big squad, but our injuries are down 25% on last year, so we don’t need as many players as we have because our fitness programme is very, very good.”
Keane is set to talk further with chief executive Simon Clegg regarding the club's pre-season programme this week. The Blues boss is planning a return to Portugal for warm weather training and some friendlies in Ireland but wants to involve less travelling, while a session with the army is unlikely to be included this year.