Town manager Roy Keane says he’s looking at adding four players to the squad. The Blues boss, who is frustrated at the lack of new additions, says the Blues need to strengthen in order to take the pressure of the younger players.
Keane says he firstly needs to bring in frontmen: "We need some more goals in our team, in terms of attacking positions. Pablo has gone, Jon Walters has gone, there’s talk of Steady maybe going next week and Connor’s injured, so you’re talking about three or four strikers out of the squad already.
"We need one or two players there, probably somebody to cover in midfield and maybe another defender. People are talking about getting one player in, we need about four, and even then I probably wouldn’t be too happy, but four would probably steady the ship for us.”
The Town boss says the depth of his already injury-hit squad will be tested even more in the weeks to come: "We’ve got some big games coming up and in a couple of weeks a few lads are away at international matches and they don’t always come back fit.
"We’ve got a lot of young players and I don’t want to be putting pressure on the likes of Luke Hyam to be playing every week because, as I said over the weekend, they mightn’t pay for it this season but they will when they’re 24 or 25.”
Keane says that it is full-time signings he’d prefer to make rather than loans, but admitted that he is in the dark regarding how the final days of the transfer window will progress: "God knows where we’d be if it wasn’t for the loan players last season, but we can’t do that every season. We need the nucleus of our own players and that’s why the players I’ve targeted will be permanent deals.
"But sometimes these deals don’t happen, sometimes you wait until the end and they end up being loan deals. For me to try and predict what’s going to happen in the next few days is ridiculous.”
The Blues boss’s number one target through the summer is understood to have been Cardiff frontman Michael Chopra, but that at present the club are unwilling to pay the fee asked by the Bluebirds: "If someone gives them their valuation, then Chopra might go, but Ipswich wouldn’t meet that valuation at the moment.”
Meanwhile Keane has confirmed that striker Jon Stead has continued to speak with various clubs: "I think there have been more talks with Steady this week. But at the moment Steady’s involved with us at Palace because we need him.”
Bristol City are believed to have renewed their interest in the former England U21 international after earlier talks broke down, while Stead has also held dialogue with Blackpool and Cardiff City.
Keane says he has had loan enquiries regarding his younger players but until reinforcements are added to the squad none of them will be allowed to move on.