Blues boss Paul Jewell insists he hasn’t given up on signing midfielder Keith Andrews on a permanent basis, despite apparent interest from Premier League clubs. The Town manager is hopeful he can sign Andrews and central defender Danny Collins, who returns to Stoke at the end of his loan next week, during January.
Jewell said: "I’m not resigned to losing Keith. I think Keith likes it here and we like him and we’d like to keep him.
"But when you take a player on loan and he does well, you’re always going to be up against other clubs sniffing around him and I fully understand that. However, we want to be in there fighting to try and sign him.”
He admits that the duo returning to their clubs is not ideal: "It is a blow to us but we’re trying to keep them. We want to keep those players and if we can’t keep them we’re going to have to replace them.
"I think people sometimes underestimate the intelligence of football people, they think ‘Danny Collins is going, what are we going to do now? We’ve lost Keith Andrews, let’s go through the directory and see who’s available’.
"But [the search for players] never stops. We’re always looking to improve the squad. I was at a game abroad last Friday. It’s always a situation where we’re trying to move forward, trying to think to the future.
"It’s difficult when you’ve lost seven games on the bounce, but you’ve got to try and look at the bigger picture.
"I know everything’s about survival at the moment, almost, but I want to be here for a long time and I want to be successful.”
The recruitment of five loan players, now reduced to four since David Stockdale’s return, hasn’t been without its critics but Jewell says you can’t often bring in players of the quality of the likes of Andrews and Collins other than on short-term deals: "I think as a manager you have to take responsibility. Sometimes that’s unfair but I’ve put the squad together, and it’s a good squad and we should be doing better than we are, although I think we’ve shown on a few occasions what we’re capable of.
"When you’re getting players from Premier League clubs, sometimes the only way you can get them is on loan. So, do you get them on loan or do you not get them?
"I think it’s difficult at the moment to get good players that we have to use the loan market and maybe we haven’t just got the balance right.”
He says he wants to sign players on full-time contracts if possible with players also preferring that option all things being equal: "Any manager or any player would like to do a permanent rather than a loan deal. With a permanent deal, you’re there for two or three years, you move your family up, you settle.
"When you’re on loan, you probably live in a hotel or away from your family, so nothing is ideal when it’s a loan. But if I could have done permanent deals that easily, we could have done them.”
But he says money plays a big role in these situations with Danny Collins’s circumstances not untypical: "Danny’s a Premier League footballer, he’s got a year to go on his contract, so Stoke and Danny are holding all the cards.
"We want to get decent players but finance does have to come into it, and it’s not as if we’re being cheapskates, that’s not the case at all.”