Boss Paul Jewell believes Town made reasonable offers for their three transfer targets, Portsmouth’s Joel Ward and Jason Pearce and Crewe’s Nick Powell. The Blues have had their initial bids rebuffed but appear certain to make further moves for the trio.
Jewell said: "I think we’ve made the offers that we think are reasonable but everything is open to negotiation. The first offer is very rarely accepted, if at all.
"There’s no mileage in me trying to do these deals if they’re not doable. If we can get common ground, great. If we can’t, we’ll just try and move on. We haven’t just got those targets, we have plenty of targets in mind.”
Town are understood to have offered £1 million for the Pompey pair, while reports in Cheshire claim the Blues made a bid of £1.3 million plus top-ups to Crewe for Powell. The Railwaymen are understood to have targeted a fee of around double that initially with significant further milestone payments. Arsenal, Chelsea and a number of other Premier League sides have watched Powell regularly since last season.
As of yesterday afternoon, the Town manager was yet to liaise with owner Marcus Evans regarding Portsmouth’s situation and the Blues’ next move: "I tried to ring Marcus this morning and I don’t know what their valuation is.
"It’s very difficult. We’re all guilty of putting a higher value on our player and a lower one on an opposition player. I’ll get a feel for that in the next day or two and see whether they’re worth pursuing.”
If they’re not, Jewell says a line has to be drawn and other targets chased: "You have to do that in any deal, whether it’s this one or the next one.
"We’ve put a valuation on the player, they’ll put a valuation on the player and if we can’t come to some agreement, there’s no point.
"I can ring up Manchester United and ask about one of their players, but you’ve got to be somewhere close to start off with. If we’re miles apart, then we move on.”
He says just because Evans is well-heeled it doesn’t mean there’s an unlimited budget: "We’ve certainly got a wealthy owner. I think a couple of years ago there was a misconception that we were out there paying silly money and silly wages. We don’t. We’re competitive, there’s no doubt about that.
"Everyone has to have a price and everything eventually comes down to finances, whether that’s at Ipswich or at another club. Maybe there are one or two exceptions to that but there’s an economic world out there that’s not easy, and football’s part of that. We have to cut our cloth accordingly.”
Overall, Jewell is no fan of the transfer window: "I think the transfer window can be a nonsense really because everything is [intensified in] January or the summer.
"There’s a lack of quality players on the market because everyone wants to keep their good players. It does tend to become a bit of a mad rush in January, and you have to be careful.
"When I was at Derby we brought in eight players in the transfer window in January. It’s not easy, but you’ve got to try and keep a cool head and try and see the bigger picture. We’ve got to try and learn from that.”
The Town boss is looking to avoid being involved in the flurry of deals in the final hours: "I hope not because if you’re doing it on the last day it normally means you’re desperate.
"It tends to happen that in the last couple of hours, certainly with Premier League clubs because they know that once the January window closes they can’t bring anyone else in.
"After a while, Football League clubs can always loan. There’ll be the usual nonsense and the yellow ticker tape at the bottom on Sky will be going 10 to the dozen.”