Boss Mick McCarthy says he’s delighted that Blues keeper Bartosz Bialkowski has agreed to sign a new contract until the summer of 2020 with Town with the club having the usual option for a further year. The Pole's new terms almost certainly end speculation that he could move in during January with Crystal Palace having shown interest earlier in the window.
"A bit of good news is that Bart has agreed a new three-year contract,” McCarthy said at his lunchtime press conference.
"It’s been ongoing, some people read papers and say, ‘Some people suggest Bart might not have been injured [for the Leeds game] but might be going to Crystal Palace’.
"But I said all along that wasn’t the case. We’d been talking to him about a new contract. He’s under contract anyway. Whatever happens he was under contract for the rest of this season and another year.
"But I guess when that interest came all of us would have been interested in joining a Premier League club, I never knock players for that.
"But the window’s still open, he’s come and he says he wants to sign, he’s happy here and I’m delighted, and I would imagine all the fans are.”
Did the 30-year-old glovesman ask about McCarthy’s future when discussion the deal with the Blues’ manager’s contract up at the end of the season.
"I couldn’t sign him on a three-month contract anyway!” McCarthy laughed. "I just said to him, and it’s not about me it’s about him, I said to him, as a father figure, and I’m well old enough to be his father, I’d be saying to him, ‘Sign the contract, get it done’.
"You can move out of contract but if a Premier League club comes in and they really want you, they come and make a play for you, they take you anyway. They give enough money to take them out.
"Get your contract signed, be happy because he loves it here and he loves where he lives. He might as well be playing and be happy and if it changes in 12 months’ time, so be it.
"But if not, in the meantime, he’s still the best keeper in this league, for my money.”
Are there plans to discuss new terms with the other players whose terms are up at the end of the season, among them Cole Skuse?
"Yes, I guess so,” he added. "That’s kind of ongoing. There’s a date in their contracts by when we’d have to notify them of their options.”