Blues boss Paul Jewell says Town continue to talk to Portsmouth regarding their triple bid for Jason Pearce, Joel Ward (pictured) and Stephen Henderson. The Town manager, who confirmed that Falkirk central defender Murray Wallace is at the club today, as reported by TWTD this morning, says the Blues could yet sign any number of the Pompey three before Tuesday evening's deadline.
Jewell said: "I just spoke to the owner after training and the two clubs [are talking]. It’s difficult because we don’t quite know who we’re dealing with, whether it’s the administrator [of Portsmouth’s parent company Convers Sports Initiatives] or the chief executive [of Portsmouth].
"We made an offer for three Portsmouth players last week. The names I’m not prepared to divulge, I don’t think that’s right.
"That was rejected and the clubs are still talking. Whether we get one player, two players or three players is still up in the air.”
He admits that Pompey’s financial situation — CSI are in administration while the club itself is facing a winding-up order — is not helping matters: "Complicated is not the word. It’s complicated to the nth degree.”
Jewell says the possibility of skipper Grant Leadbitter and Damien Delaney going the other way hasn’t come up in discussions he’s been involved in, although he has heard the suggestion mooted: "I wasn’t quite sure where those names came from because they’ve never been mentioned to me.
"When I spoke to [Portsmouth manager] Michael Appleton last week - and I’ve only had one conversation with Michael to tell him we were interested in the players - we never mentioned any of our players going there.
"As far as I’m aware at the moment, there’s been no contact, there have been no enquiries about Grant and Damien. I’ve heard that on the grapevine but it’s news to me.”
The Blues had an offer for Falkirk’s Murray Wallace accepted last week and Jewell confirmed that the 19-year-old is at Playford Road today for a look around and to talk personal terms.
Town, Brighton, Huddersfield and probably other clubs have all agreed a £300,000 plus add-ons deal with Falkirk for the former Rangers trainee who will return to the Scottish League Division One side for the rest of the season under the terms of those agreements.
Jewell said: "He’s been up here this morning but he’s got a few clubs to speak to. He’s a young lad and it’s a big decision for him.
"I know he’s been to Brighton and I know he’s going to a couple of places after us. We have to respect that.
"He’s one for the future. He’s probably not ready to go into the Championship quite yet but we’d like to bring him in and do that for the future. Whether that happens is down to a lot of factors.”
While Jewell ideally wants permanent signings, he says players could come in on loan if longer term deals can’t be done before the window slams shut: "In the Football League, at least the loan market is open to us, so even when the window closes tomorrow at 11pm, it opens next week for loans. So, it’s not as final as it is in the Premier League.
"We do have alternatives in the loan market but I want to start bringing in players here that we can have permanently.
"Whether we can do that with the players that we’ve mentioned [I'm not sure], there’s a lot of hard work. It’s been going on for weeks now, weeks and weeks, and it’s getting critical now because the window closes.”
Jewell says Town are not one of the clubs to have made an offer for Crawley striker Tyrone Barnett and is not targeting Liverpool youngster Jon Flanagan.