Midfielder Keith Andrews has played the last game of his loan spell with the Blues with the hamstring tear he suffered at Leicester on Monday set to keep him out of action for four to five weeks. Andrews’s loan spell at Portman Road is up after Monday’s game against Nottingham Forest with Blues boss Paul Jewell keen to keep the Irishman at Portman Road.
Jewell reaffirmed his interest in signing the Dubliner on a permanent basis: "We’d still like to sign Keith Andrews. We are up against a lot of competition but we’d like to sign Keith as he’s done great for us.
"Negotiations are ongoing between his agent and ourselves. Whether it can be done is down to a number of factors.”
One of those factors is whether Blackburn want a fee with speculation that they might be after £250,000 or alternatively that they would be happy to allow the former MK Dons man to leave on a free transfer in order to remove the remaining 18 months of his contract from their wage bill.
The Town manager says he has spoken with Andrews’s agent who is liaising with Blackburn, a club which Jewell has previously said is difficult to deal with: "People think he’s a free but that’s a question we need to ask Blackburn really before anything can be done with any team, whether that’s a Premier League team or a Championship team.
"The thing we’ve got to find out is whether he’s available on a free and if he’s not, how much he is available for.
"The agent has been speaking with the deputy chief executive at Blackburn, Paul Hunt, and assures me that he thinks Keith will be a free transfer.
"The agent says that Keith doesn’t want to go back, which is all well and good, but if a club wants you back and you’re contracted to them, you’ve got to go back to them.”
The instability at Ewood Park is an another issue which could also be a factor during January: "The manager can change and the guy who thinks he’s got no chance of being in the team is all of a sudden in the team and the best player.
"Whether it’s Blackburn or it’s Ipswich, if the manager changes, the picture changes. I’m not saying that Steve Kean’s going to lose his job, I’m just saying that you never, ever know what’s going to happen in football.”
Jewell insists that the reported interest from Premier League sides Aston Villa, Everton, Wigan, Bolton and Swansea won’t necessarily scupper Town’s attempt to land Andrews: "Keith’s words when I spoke to him this morning were that he doesn’t want to be a squad player anywhere, he doesn’t want to go to the Premier League and not play.
"He’s 31 now, he’s got the European Championships coming up in the summer and he needs to be playing.
"He likes it here, we like him but at the end of the day he’s got to do what’s best for Keith Andrews, both financially and professionally, and I fully respect and understand that.”