Town manager Paul Jewell has urged patience as he looks to sign not just any centre-half but the right centre-half to compete with Luke Chambers and Tommy Smith for a place in his side. The Blues boss had hoped to bring in additional central defender before Saturday’s game at Middlesbrough but continues to draw a blank.
Jewell said: "I keep on asking people to be patient. We’ve got to bring the right players in, a lot of things have to fall into place - they’ve got to be better or as good as what we’ve got, they’ve got to want to come, they’ve got to be affordable. All the boxes have to be ticked and that’s not easy.”
Dismissing suggestions he’s under pressure to get a centre-half signed, sealed and in his squad, the Liverpudlian says has been offered plenty of players but that they weren’t of the required standard: "I want to bring a centre-back back in and we need a centre-back brought in, but I’m not under a lot of pressure.
"The pressure I’m under is what I put myself under. I could have brought in 20 centre-halves between the back end of last season and the start of this.
"But I’m trying to make sure the one I get is the right one. The pressure is to get the right one, not to bring a centre-half in.
"It’s about being strong and about saying to people who think they know better ‘Look, I’ve got to try and get the [right] centre-half in’.
"I’ve had three calls this morning about centre-halves, but I don’t think they’re better than what we’ve got.”
He admits though that one injury would see his squad very stretched: "We want to bring a centre-half in. We want to improve the team all over but we know we’re a centre-half light because we’ve only got two and if anything happened to them we’d be in trouble.
"We want someone to come in and put pressure on them as well, competition for places. People can jump up and down all they like, I’m not going to bring in a centre-half because it appeases people, I have to bring him in because I think he’s the right one.”
He says that when he has found players of the right calibre, the moves have broken down: "That’s happened quite a lot over the summer for different reasons. Now that the Premier League managers have named their 25, that’s less of an issue, but then there’s less quality about.
"There have been a couple of enquiries that we’ve made, even to lads that are in the 25, but it hasn’t happened.”
As reported last week, Stoke pair Matthew Upson, who is in the 25, and Danny Higginbotham, who isn't, were on Jewell's list of potential signings, along with QPR's Clint Hill, who has been named in Mark Hughes's squad for the first half of the season.
Although he says he has to work within a particular market — "I could go and ask Brendan Rodgers if I could have Jamie Carragher or Martin Skrtel but we couldn’t afford them” — he says the financial side of bringing in the players he has targeted hasn’t been the problem but it's other issues which have scuppered proposed moves.
In one case an injury to another player at a Premier League club saw a permanent deal collapse: "We had one lined up where we were going to buy him but the injury came and I understand the manager’s point of view.
"We agreed a fee, the personal terms wouldn’t have been a problem, the injury happened and that was aborted.”
Jewell, who has ended his interest in Southend's Bilel Mohsni but could move for current trialist, former FC Köln man Kevin Pezzoni, put the search on temporary hold yesterday as he looked towards the weekend game at Middlesbrough and feels it’s just as important to work on developing the players already at the club as it is to bring new signings in: "It’s Thursday and all our efforts are towards Saturday.
"We haven’t been sat on a beach since the Huddersfield game having a laugh, we’ve been trying to improve the squad and improve what we’ve got.
"It’s important not just improve the squad but improve what we’ve got as well. We’ve got a good squad here, we’ve got a good bunch of lads who are giving everything they’ve got.”