Town continue to work on their triple move for Portsmouth’s Jason Pearce, Joel Ward and Stephen Henderson with negotiations set to go all the way to this evening’s 11pm deadline.
Despite the trio all being in Hampshire this morning, talks between the clubs and involving Pompey’s parent company’s administrator have continued behind the scenes and claims that the deal is all but dead are somewhat premature.
Town could still land one, two or all three of their targets with just under eight hours of the window remaining.
A source close to Pompey told TWTD earlier that versatile midfielder or defender Joel Ward was the most likely of the three to sign, although wasn’t ruling out any of the trio making the switch to Portman Road.
Portsmouth need to sell players due their ongoing financial problems which saw them issued with a winding-up order last week. Winger Ryan Williams looks set to join Fulham for £500,000 but they would appear to need to raise significantly more than that with HMRC owed £1.6 million in unpaid PAYE.
Even if all aspects of the deal (or deals) aren’t sorted before tonight’s deadline, Town have previously signed players such as Alan Quinn and Jon Stead on loan initially with the details of a permanent switch completed in the days afterwards.
We understand no other deals, in or out, are currently ongoing.