Blues boss Paul Jewell says Town could pursue the signings of Portsmouth pair Joel Ward and Jason Pearce before next Thursday’s loan deadline but only if they are available at the right price and the players want sensible wages. Midfielder or defender Ward and centre-half Pearce were two of the three Pompey players the Blues targeted in January.
Jewell says crisis-club Portsmouth have made the Blues aware of who they are looking to offload in order to raise cash, several players already having left Fratton Park in recent weeks: "I think they’ve been in contact with the club about players who are available. Whether we pursue that is another thing.
"It all depends on what the price is and what the players are looking for because the economic climate has changed and the wages that people think we have been paying aren’t there any more, even though expectations are always high.”
But as long as the financial side of proposed deals are within acceptable parameters, Jewell is still keen on Ward, whose January move to Portman Road broke down over personal terms, and Pearce, who was the subject of failed bids from Town and others in January, and who has more recently been linked with Southampton and West Ham.
"If things are right, we’re interested,” he confirmed. "But that goes not only for those players but other players as well. As I said, football is taking a reality check and I think players, agents and everybody in the game has got to think that if we’re not careful the game will end up bankrupt and we obviously don’t want that."
The Blues boss says that the situations at clubs like Pompey and the upcoming Financial Fair Play rules, which mean that clubs will have to work within a break-even model, will reduce players’ wages: "Football has to look at Portsmouth, has to look at Rangers, has to look at Port Vale and say ‘Look, we’d love to give you big money, but we can’t put the club at risk, it’s got to be financially viable for us’.
"I think that when we’re negotiating with players between now and next season there will be a definite thought of cutting our cloth accordingly because we don’t want anything to happen as has happened at other clubs.
"I don’t think people believe how close Portsmouth and Rangers are to going out of business. We say it but we don’t actually think it’s going to happen.
"Can you imagine if those clubs go out of business? It’s people’s lives, not just the people that work there but supporters - the club’s theirs, it belongs to them. If the club goes bust, then that club’s gone. We’ve got to make sure we realise the seriousness of the situation.”
The third January Portsmouth target, Irish U21 international Stephen Henderson, has joined West Ham on loan with a view to a permanent deal with Jewell never convinced that the goalkeeper wanted a move to Portman Road: "We got the feeling the lad was quite happy to [stay at Portsmouth]. We didn’t even get to the point of speaking to him.
"I didn’t get to speak to any of the players. I think we spoke to the agent of one of them, but I didn’t speak to any of them and there didn’t seem to be an awful lot of them pushing to come here. Maybe things happen for a reason.”
Jewell says he could look at bringing in another keeper before next Thursday with loanee Alex McCarthy’s spell from Reading up on April 11th: "I don’t know yet. We’ll see. There might be a possibility of that or we might go with Arran Lee-Barrett.
"He’s been unlucky a couple of times this season, to be fair. He’s come in and played a few matches and he’s been fine.”