Town manager Roy Keane says that in an ideal world he would have preferred to keep striker Jon Stead, who joined Bristol City in a £225,000 deal yesterday. The Blues boss will be looking to add more attacking options to his squad in the weeks to come.
Keane said: "In an ideal world I’d have liked to have kept Steady, to have different options, but Steady’s had a good offer, a three-year deal at Bristol City, and we can’t do that at the moment. You’ve got to try and be fair to players and move on.
"But we’ll miss him. I think Steady was fairly popular amongst the lads and he’s a good lad to have around the place, lots of experience. It puts more pressure on the younger players, but at the moment they seem to be handling it well, although we’re two or three weeks into the season and the big challenges are yet to come over the next few months.
Keane added: "We’ve had to shift players out to get lads in, whether that’s numbers or wages. And I’m comfortable with that. The important thing for me as a manager is to know where I stand and I’ve always been like that.
"If I have to sell 10 players next week, as long as I know where I stand, I’m OK with that. There have been more talks over the weekend, we’re all focused and we all know where we’re at and we’re fine with that.”
The Blues boss admits he was frustrated last week with Jason Scotland’s transfer dragging on, but says he wasn’t overly stressed by the situation: "I was frustrated, yes, but I have different levels of frustration and 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.”
Keane says he is aware that there are limits with regards to money and that significant cash has been paid out during his time in charge at Portman Road: "I understand the finances of the club. I know there’s been decent money spent over the last few years, people tend to forget that. We've brought Márton Fülöp in and Mark Kennedy, these lads are on decent wages. Darren O’Dea came from Celtic, they’re not on £400.
"The lads we've brought in are on decent money. A lot of the lads we let go mightn’t have been on the wages of the players we’ve brought in. Don’t get bogged down by whether we’ve freed up millions and millions in wages, we haven’t.”
The Town manager was delighted that Scotland’s deal was finally completed yesterday but says the Trinidadian will need help to score the goals to fire the Blues into the Premier League: "He won’t do it by himself, strikers need service and I think we need one or two more attacking players in the squad. The loan options we’ll be looking at will be attacking positions.”
Meanwhile, the Blues, Norwich and Crystal Palace have been linked with former Tottenham and Wolves striker Steffen Iversen. The 34-year-old’s contract with Norwegian side Rosenborg comes to an end in three months’ time.