Blues CEO Mark Ashton says the process of finding a new Town manager will take as long as it takes even if he’d ideally like the new man in place as soon as possible.
Town sacked manager Paul Cook on Saturday evening after nine months in charge at Portman Road.
Ashton says the Blues will be looking at candidates currently in jobs as well as those out of work at present.
"I’m not going to limit us,” Ashton said. "Absolutely. What happens is, I get managers recommended to me, their names sent, in and out of work, coaches in and out of work, from all different leagues.
"The reality is that I need to sift through whether those managers actually know that these agents have put them in because you would be amazed, people just randomly put names in trying to make a quid off the back of it.
"We have sift through that and do it properly. We’ll do that in the next 48 hours. We’ve got a game tomorrow and then Mike O’Leary and I will lead that process and I want to see as many as I can because this industry is filled with perception and it’s not until you meet people you see what they’re really about. I’ve got to clear my diary and this has to be my focus with Mike.”
A head coach rather than manager? "Sometimes you’re playing with semantics. I’m totally relaxed around titles. I think the one thing that’s clear to me is that I’ve worked at some, I would say, decent-sized clubs in my career. This is the biggest and it surprises me how big this club is historically and how big it is now.
"You’ve seen how many tickets we’ve sold, we’re not far off selling a combined 70,000 tickets for those three games over Christmas.
"So, I’m relaxed about titles but whoever sits in that seat, needs to be able to deal with the weight that this football club brings because there are big expectations.”
Has there already been interest? "Oh God yeah! And I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t looked at them all yet because I’ve been so busy all day yesterday until now dealing with the current situation. My team are compiling all the names and this afternoon we’ll start to go through them.”
Ashton, who wouldn’t be drawn on precisely which names, outlined how the ultimate decision will be made.
"What we’ll do is shortlist and then take it to the US board and then it’ll be a final board decision around recommendations.”
Does he want the new boss in by January? "I can’t say that. Earlier if possible, but this is such an important appointment for this football club that if I have to take an extra week at whatever point it is to get what we believe to be the right one, we’ll do it, but I’ll prefer to do it as soon as we can.”
If the new manager is in place by January, they will almost certainly want to make tweaks to the squad, will that option be there for them?
"One hundred per cent there will,” Ashton insisted. "We know the positions and I don’t think whoever comes in will alter the positions that we’re looking for.
"But in an ideal world, I’d have them in as soon as possible so they can influence those. But if they’re not in we’ll just get on, we’ve got a recruitment team that we’re building here and we’ve got coaches in place and we’ll get on with out business.
"It was the players that said to me yesterday, the board said the same thing. The players said to me ‘This season is not dead’ and we need to make sure we’re in that mix at the end of the season.”
Regarding Peter Reid’s situation, the former Sunderland boss recently having been appointed to a consultancy role working with Cook, Ashton said: "We need to have a conversation with Peter today.”
On Saturday striker James Norwood implied that it wasn’t Cook who had relegated him to the U23s but that the decision came from above. Will the striker be available to McGreal and in time the new manager?
"The manager selects whoever he wants to select,” Ashton said. "It’s down to the manager.”