Chief executive Simon Clegg has revealed that Town's move to sign Portsmouth trio Jason Pearce, Joel Ward and Stephen Henderson (pictured) is still “a live issue”. On the final day of the January transfer window, the Blues had offers for keeper Henderson and midfielder or defender Ward accepted, the deals breaking down due to the players’ wage demands, while Pompey rebuffed bids from Town and others for centre-half Pearce.
Since January, Portsmouth have gone into administration with their administrator Trevor Birch yesterday warning that the Hampshire club could run out of money before the end of the season.
One obvious method of raising cash is to sell players and Clegg told TWTD that Town’s interest in some or all of the January trio is still ongoing: "Let’s just say it’s a live issue.
"The club had previous interest in three Portsmouth players. Portsmouth were in a terrible financial situation, that’s clear. They need money, they need to sell assets.
"I can’t believe that our position has changed substantially in terms of the interest we may have had in some of those players over a four-week period.”
Although the transfer window is closed, the Blues could sign the players on loan initially with previously agreed permanent deals being formalised in the summer. Peterborough recently recruited Crawley striker Tyrone Barnett on that basis.
Clegg says dealing with Portsmouth during January was far from an easy business with discussions taking place with both Andrew Andronikou, the joint-administrator of Portsmouth’s owners Convers Sports Initiatives, and now-departed club chief executive David Lampitt.
"It was incredibly hard work,” he admitted. "We were dealing with [Andrew Andronikou] on the one hand and David Lampitt on the other. Let’s just say, with the benefit of hindsight, there were games being played between the two.”
Further than that, he wouldn’t be drawn on why the deals for Henderson and Ward didn’t go through once the undisclosed bids had been accepted: "It would be wrong for me to speculate on the record in terms of why we weren’t able to sign the players after we had agreed a price with Portsmouth. In the main that related to player wage expectations.”
Clegg did confirm our earlier report that one of the players had targeted tripling his wages: "Of the three players that we were speaking to, certainly one of them had an expectation of three times what he was earning at the moment, which in the context of Financial Fair Play is just not going to happen.
"But I also don’t know who was telling him to do that. There were quite a lot of underhand movements within the club. They were definitely trying to hold on and keep their squad together.”
Given that Pompey’s situation has worsened significantly since the end of the transfer window and their need for cash more desperate, the players’ values will have dropped and they are likely to be available for lower fees than were previously agreed.
If Pompey were to go out of business, their fixtures would be expunged with Town one of the big losers. Portsmouth’s demise would, as things stand, see the Blues drop two places to 18th with 34 points, six points off relegation in the 23-team division from which two clubs would drop into League One at the end of the season.