Manager Mick McCarthy says fans shouldn’t expect a complete overhaul of his squad during the January transfer window. The Blues boss will look to add to his squad, having been promised funds by owner Marcus Evans, but there won’t be a major influx of new players.
McCarthy says his first task will be to address the situation with the six domestic loanees — Stephen Henderson, Bilel Mohsni, Danny Higginbotham, DJ Campbell, Bradley Orr and the now injured Tyrone Barnett.
He said: "There’s no chance [of a complete overhaul]. I’ve got to wait and see what happens with the ones we’ve got.
"I’ve got six loans and poor old Bilel Mohsni, who has come here and is a smashing fella, is the one who has had his nose pushed out because he can’t be involved in the squad. I can only have five and I think the other five are better for me to have in the squad.
"I can’t have any more than five, I’m not going to be taking seven and be leaving two behind every week who can’t be involved, that would be wrong and nobody’s going to come in those circumstances.
"Unless it happens with the loans that we have, if we renew them and keep them, great, if we don’t, then I might have to replace them.”
He says he’s still to speak to Harry Redknapp regarding DJ Campbell’s situation, the Blues boss having left a message for the new QPR manager last week: "No, I haven’t, but he’s busy and I’m busy. There’s nothing we can do until January. There’s no great urgency. He’ll be playing on Saturday.”
The 53-year-old says there won’t be six or seven new additions during the window: "The other thing is, of course, that anything that you buy in January generally costs a considerable amount more than it would if you were buying in the close season because everybody knows that everybody gets desperate for players at this time and they all become more expensive, both to purchase and to employ.”
He expects to still be involved in deals right at the end of the month: "Like utopians, we all think that on January 1st everything will be sorted out. Well, lots of our loan players are here until the middle of January and to the end of January.
"We’ll have to see what happens with them. The reality is that everybody will say ‘We’ll wait and see what happens, whether we get anybody in’, Premier League clubs certainly will.
"If you’re trying to loan players from them they’re reluctant to weaken their hand and let their players go in case they get injuries. As usual, we’ll all be scrabbling around all through January, right to the very end, no doubt.”
In terms of players who might be weighing up moves in January, he says league position does come into it, but perhaps only when it comes to the very top of the division: "Of course they [want to go to clubs which are doing well], they want to be promoted.
"But I wonder how many teams they look at in the Championship and think that’s going to happen to them immediately.
"There are plenty up near the play-offs but I don’t think there are that many who realistically think they are going to get in there.
"Cardiff look like promotion material, Middlesbrough are a good side, Leicester when we played them, Palace.
"Once you look outside the top six, it's who you fancy going to play for; the area comes into consideration, the crowds that go and watch, maybe the type of football, the manager that’s there.
"There are all sorts of things that decide whether players would like to come and play. I think we’ve got lots of those components that people would fancy.”