Blues boss Paul Jewell has revealed that Aston Villa are yet to make an offer for Town left-back Aaron Cresswell but have made an enquiry regarding the 22-year-old. News of Villa’s interest broke on Tuesday night with claims that a £3.5 million offer had been lodged and a deal was close.
After last night’s game at Cambridge Jewell outlined the actual situation: "I’ll tell you exactly how I see it, I’ll tell you what I’ve told Cressy.
"[Town assistant manager] Chris [Hutchings] spoke to [Villa manager] Paul Lambert, a good pal of his, [on Tuesday] to ask him about a player who used to play for a club that he used to manage and he never mentioned Aaron Cresswell, which I found strange.
"The club, not through the manager, have had contact asking what Aaron’s situation is. The situation is this: we want to keep him at the football club, we don’t want to sell our best players. But every player, whoever that player is, has always got a price.
"We don’t want to sell," he continued. "We don’t encourage the sale of our players, but if someone comes in and makes an offer we can’t refuse [then they could be sold].
"I’ve told Cressy that we want to keep him at the club. He’s done great and until we have a bid there’s nothing to turn down really.
"There’s always interest in players from other clubs, but I just found it a bit strange that Paul spoke to Chris yesterday, he knows him well, and he never mentioned it. There’s something in it because their chief executive rang ours but other than that, nothing.”
Despite reports of offers and price tags, Jewell says the money side of a potential deal hasn’t been discussed: "I’ve seen there have been fees mentioned in the press, but nothing’s been mentioned.
"As far as I’m aware, the conversation was ‘What’s the situation with Aaron Cresswell?’ and the situation is as I just told you — we want him to be part of our team.
"But again if a club like Aston Villa comes [in with an offer] it has to be right for us. We don’t want to sell Cressy. We bought him, developed him and at the end of the day I’ve told him that.
"If we get an offer that we have to consider, then we’ll consider it, but we don’t encourage any offers.”
He says selling players such as Cresswell doesn’t fit into his plans: "We want to try and build for the future, that’s why we want to keep Cressy, but at the same time, any player in the world has their price. But we’re more interested in building if we possibly can.”
The Blues boss has no concerns regarding the effect the interest might have on the player: "I called him in today and had the conversation with him after training and told him the situation. I don’t expect him to have anything other than a 100% attitude and he won’t. He’s a top class lad.”
Meanwhile, Jewell says he’s heard nothing from Nottingham Forest regarding Damien Delaney and doesn’t expect to: "I haven’t heard from them because I don’t think there’s anything in it.
"The last person I spoke to [on Tuesday] afternoon was someone telling me that Danny Collins is going to Forest, so unless they want to play two left-sided centre-backs, I don’t know. I’ve had no contact with Forest.”