Striker David McGoldrick will return to Nottingham Forest after Saturday’s game at Derby with his loan having come to an end. The 25-year-old had been understood to be with the Blues until the end of the season — at which point he is expected to sign a two-year deal — but is in fact only on a 93-day loan.
Manager Mick McCarthy confirmed that the four-goal frontman will be on his way back to the City Ground after the weekend: "The loan deal was for 93 days and we took him until the Derby game.
"He’s a really good player and before anybody asks me why we didn’t sign him, he couldn’t have three registrations for one club in any season.
"He’d been registered with Forest and he’d been registered with Coventry as a window-to-window loan and you can’t have three.
"We would have signed him permanently at the time, but we couldn’t so we had to take him on an emergency loan, so it was either miss him for five games at the start of the loan or five at the end.”
Both club and player have stated that he will sign a two-year permanent deal with the Blues on July 1st, but McCarthy says that’s not yet formalised: "We can’t do anything about that, it’s one of those things.
"We took him on loan for 93 days, there have been talks with him because we agreed to take him and give him a contract, providing we stay in the Championship, and that [Town's divisional status] is not sorted yet.”
The Blues boss says McGoldrick couldn’t sign a pre-contract agreement: "He can’t sign one, that’s illegal. You can’t do that.
"We’ve discussed it with him and he wants to stay, but until he comes out of contract we can’t do anything about it. There’s no point in me trying to hide away from that fact because everybody knows.
"Has he loved it here, has he liked it? Does he want to stay? [If we] stay in the league, I think he does. He’s been loved here by everybody and he’s enjoyed his football, so we’ll see.”
Meanwhile, McCarthy confirmed that midfielder Jay Tabb has had his loan from Reading extended until the end of the season: ”That’s to the end of the season. They’ve got a recall on it, which suits everybody. They’ll only recall him if they want to play him.
"Tabby’s doing great for us, but if they wanted to play him in the Premier League I couldn’t deny him that anyway. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. He’s loving it and he wants to play.”