Town manager Mick McCarthy and owner Marcus Evans are set to continue their meetings regarding the budget and their plans for the new season in the next few days. We understand the pair met last week, having previously held talks in the days after the Blues confirmed their Championship status.
The restrictions of Financial Fair Play are likely to mean most of Town’s summer signings will be Bosman deals, although even then the Blues won’t be able to match the wages offered by clubs with parachute payments, as was the case with former Notts County winger Alan Judge, who last week agreed to rejoin his former club Blackburn.
Former Bristol City skipper Cole Skuse and ex-Nottingham Forest striker David McGoldrick are already set to sign contracts at Portman Road on July 1st, while released Wolves winger Stephen Hunt is another Bosman target.
McCarthy is understood not to have been at Wembley for yesterday’s League One play-off final, which may suggest that his current interest in Brentford wideman Harry Forrester, who he watched earlier in the season, has been overstated.
Forrester, whose Bees lost 2-1 to former Blues midfielder Ed Upson's Yeovil at Wembley, is also out of contract at the end of June. The 22-year-old is to hold talks with Brentford about his situation, although he seems certain to leave Griffin Park: "I can’t say anything on my future yet.
"I’ve got a meeting with the owner but we’ll talk about that. Now is not the time. We’re devastated that we haven’t gone up. We’ll see what happens.”
Meanwhile, former Wolves director Kevin Threlfall says Wolves’ plummet into League One was partly down to Mick McCarthy’s transfer dealings while he was at Molineux. The current Town boss was sacked by then-Premier League Wolves in February 2012 and suffered their second successive relegation earlier this month.
Threlfall, who says some of the Molineux board were "frightened” of McCarthy, told the Wolverhampton Express and Star: "Mick would decide who he wanted to buy and the rest of the board would have absolutely no input in the process.
"The best we could ever get out of him was ‘he will do us a job.’ We were always operating on Mick’s word, there was no due diligence on these players and we have paid the price. I’m afraid a lot of the blame for where we are now lies at Mick’s door.”
Elsewhere, we understand that Olympic gold medal-winning rower Steve Williams, who was employed in a consultancy role working with fitness coach Andy Liddell last summer, left the staff towards the end of the season.