Blues boss Paul Jewell says he will speak to Hull City in the next couple of weeks regarding what he says will be a “very, very difficult” deal to ensure that Player of the Year Jimmy Bullard returns to Portman Road next season. The 32-year-old has two years remaining on his £45,000-a-week contract at the KC Stadium.
Jewell says he’d love to have Bullard as part of his squad next season having talked to the player about his future on Friday: "We’d love to have Jimmy here, although I’d also like have Messi here but they’re quite expensive - I don’t know who’s on more money, Jimmy or Messi!
"It is a very, very difficult deal for us to do. I think the owner deserves great credit for doing what he’s done so far.
"I’ll be speaking to Hull over the next week or two to see if we can sort something out for next season.
"Obviously the supporters love him and he’s been really good for us and we’d like to have Jimmy and four or five other players in for the start of next season.”
The Town manager isn’t dismissing the possibility of a further loan: "We will explore all avenues, any way we can do it, we’ll try and do it. I think people have to realise that some things at times aren’t doable but we will endeavour and try our very best to do it.”
Jewell says his side again showed that they’re a team unused to seeing games out during the 2-1 home victory over Preston on Saturday: "We just get to a certain stage in games. We’d got the game won at 2-0 but you just don’t ever get the feeling [that the match is over] because we’ve got a team which over the last two or three years hasn’t gone on and killed games off.
"That’s still here, that’s still a bit of a problem we’ve got and that I’ve been speaking about since I got here — that killer instinct, killer mentality or whatever it is.
"Our goalie’s made some vital saves at some vital times but the game should have been out of sight in the first half. We were 2-0 up and had a couple of other chances.
"We started the second half not great and they came into it. It’s one of the many areas where we have to do better next season.”
The Town manager was impressed with youngsters Troy Brown and Ronan Murray, who was making his first Blues start: "Troy did well considering he started the game with a yellow card after a minute. He did well, I was pleased with him.
"Ronan just tired a bit in the second half. He’s been on loan at Torquay. He made some good runs and was a bit unfortunate not to score himself.
"He did OK, in fact he did better than OK, he did fine until he tired. Obviously it’s nice for youngsters to get in and it would have been nice for him to score.”
Jewell says there have been no new developments on the contract front: "We're no further than we were on Thursday when I was last asked.”