Boss Paul Jewell says Town were up against a unique set of circumstances when they were trying to land their trio of Portsmouth targets, Jason Pearce, Joel Ward (pictured) and Stephen Henderson. While Pompey turned down the Blues’ bid for Pearce, Town’s moves for Ward and Henderson broke down over personal terms with Town unwilling to agree to their "excessive" wage demands.
A still frustrated Jewell said: "We were up against the clock really and it was a bit of a saga, to be honest.
"I think they were unique circumstances because it had been going on for three weeks and we were getting different phone calls saying ‘You’re not allowed to speak to the chief executive, you have to speak to the [parent company's] administrator’.
"Then the administrator would come on and say ‘You’ve got to speak to him’, then an agent will come on and say ‘I’m brokering the deal’. It was really messy.
"I knew by four o’clock on deadline day that it wasn’t going to happen because I hadn’t even met the players, I hadn’t even spoken to the players. It was a complete nightmare really.”
He says Town were given the impression that the players would be willing to move while the lengthy fee negotiations continued, but their personal demands — which we understand to have been around triple their Portsmouth terms - exceeded what the Blues were willing to pay: "We were led to believe — not me but people who spoke to their agents — were led to believe that a deal could be done.
"But we can’t do a deal with the players until we’ve agreed a fee. When the fee was agreed eventually, the players’ terms or agents’ demands we felt were excessive, so I said no.”
While not closing the door on revisiting the situation after Football League clubs can take players on loan next week — presumably with a view to permanent deals in the summer — Jewell won’t be moved on wages: "We won’t look at it unless the demands change, that’s for sure.”
In the meantime, the Portsmouth players are still to be paid their wages for January with Pompey not yet receiving the required validation order from the court which would unfreeze their bank account, frozen after a winding up order was issued last month.
The Liverpudlian firmly dismissed suggestions that he had no Plan B — Stoke’s Danny Higginbotham who has since joined Nottingham Forest on loan was amongst a number of other enquiries — and says more players will become available now that the window has closed: "There are others that we have spoken to over the last month, but what happens is — and I don’t blame them — Premier League managers try and sell their players rather than loan them.
"When they know they can’t sell them because the window’s closed, that’s when they become available for loan. That’s exactly how it happens.”
An example of that was Stoke’s Danny Collins joining the Blues on loan soon after the closure of the summer window. Asked whether a similar situation might take place with another Premier League loanee this time around, Jewell was keeping his cards close to his chest: "Could do.”