Town boss Paul Jewell says Portsmouth boss Steve Cotterill’s weekend claim that skipper David Norris wants to join Pompey is news to him. The Blues manager, who revealed that he has two bids in for players, says he wants soon-to-be-out-of-contract duo Norris and Gareth McAuley to remain at Portman Road.
Jewell says Norris, whose current deal is up at the end of June, has said nothing to him about wanting to move to Portsmouth: "He hasn’t told me.
"I’m a little bit disappointed with that, I’ve spoken to Steve Cotterill a couple of times about different things and I think things like that should be dealt with [in private] and if something happens then he can talk.
"The two lads who are in question at the moment, David Norris and Gareth McAuley, I’ll be sitting down with them later in the week and seeing what we want to do. I’m not in any rush, I’m not under any pressure to move people out and you want to keep your better players here.
"But, if players want to leave, whoever they are, from the youngest player to the most experienced, if they don’t want to be here and things are right for us, they can move.”
However, as far as Jewell is concerned Norris and McAuley are very much in his plans for the future: "David Norris has definitely not intimated to me that he wants to leave. I want to keep him but Steve Cotterill thinks he wants to leave. However it doesn’t matter what I think or what Steve Cotterill thinks, it depends on the player. If a player wants to stay, then we’ll endeavour to keep them.
"The last I heard the chief executives were speaking, but I haven’t spoken to David Norris about it, it’s something I’ve put to the back burner, I want to get this game out the way and then we’ve got a few days to try and sort things out.
"I want to keep David Norris at the football club, I want to keep Gareth McAuley, they are the players that are being mentioned more than others. We’d like to keep them, but we want them to be committed and if we can get a deal sorted out, it’ll be great.”
The Town manager neither confirmed nor denied that Luton midfielder Andy Drury is one of the two signings he is looking to make before the transfer window closes: "We’re interested in lots of players, we’ve made bids for two players.
"Those players, without trying to mislead you, you can speculate about because I don’t really want to talk about other teams' players. I can’t ask Steve Cotterill not to do so and then talk about other teams' players myself.”
Turning his attention to Tuesday’s Carling Cup semi-final second leg against Arsenal at the Emirates, Jewell says that for all the Gunners’ quality, any result is possible in football: "We’ve got to respect them, they’re a great team, they’ve got great players, a great manager, it’s a great club. But it’s 11 against 11 and we’ve got to see if we can pull off a huge upset.”
Town have no new injuries ahead of the tie with Jewell having already picked his side. Colin Healy suffered a minor groin problem during Saturday’s 3-2 victory over Doncaster but trained today, while the Blues boss will have to make one enforced change with Lee Martin cup-tied.