Chief executive Simon Clegg says there are no tensions between himself and manager Roy Keane over the summer’s transfer dealings. Keane has appeared frustrated regarding the club’s failure to land his targets during the close season.
Speaking after introducing new signing Jason Scotland yesterday, Clegg says too much has been made of frustrations which he shares: "People can read into it what they like. Roy and myself are having discussions at least daily, two, three, four times a day sometimes.
"In terms of what we’re doing we have a very open close relationship and there are frustrations all round.
"I was hugely frustrated that having done the deal with Wigan Athletic and done the deal with Jason, he wasn’t available to us. But as I’m finding out, that’s football.”
Clegg says that despite having Marcus Evans’s money backing the club, he is careful with the purse strings: "We’re looking to try and run this on the right sort of economic model. We can only go back to the owner so many times, he’s only prepared to commit so far on a seasonal basis.
"I’m delighted he’s agreed to commit to the signing of Jason Scotland and this is a massive plus for the club.
"We will continue to review the squad - Roy, the owner and myself - in terms of if and where we would look to reinforce between now and the end of the window, and also taking into account loan signings.”
The chief executive is very pleased with progress in the first few weeks: "It’s been a fantastic start to the season. I think if you’d have offered us seven points before the start of the season we would have bitten your hand off. As it is, there’s a bit of disappointment that we haven’t got nine points.”
Clegg says the club’s aim remains the Premier League and that signings such as Scotland illustrate that intention: "We need to look at the long-term. We’re very clear that this is a highly ambitious club with aspirations to be playing in the Premier League at the earliest opportunity, exactly as I said when I arrived here 15 months ago.
"By investing in players like Jason, it demonstrates that ambition and it will take us in the right direction.”
Keane says his frustration regarding the delay over Scotland was nothing too serious: "I was frustrated, yes, but I have different levels of frustration, but this was a low-key one.
"With the players we have at the moment doing ever so well, it’s OK. But even though we’ve got the one player in, we will need to have a lucky few months coming up in terms of injuries because we’ve struggled so far with injuries.
"We’ll have a look through the next few weeks, make plenty of phonecalls and enquiries trying to get the loan players in. We’ll see how that pans out.”
Keane is after two or three more additions to his squad and Clegg says the club will continue to look for new signings, both before and after the closure of the transfer window: "There’s still the best part of a week left of the transfer window and the loan window will open up shortly thereafter.
"I’m not going to make any predictions in terms of what’s going to happen between now and the end of the week.”