Town boss Kieran McKenna, who is close to adding Blackpool centre-half Richard Keogh to his squad, has been looking to add an experienced defender to his squad and says confirmation of the new signing, which is expected to come tomorrow, is likely to lead to youngster Corrie Ndaba going out on loan.
Keogh was at Town today to undergo a medical and discuss personal terms a nominal fee having been agreed with the Championship Tangerines.
We understand that there is still some minor issues relating to the deal to be confirmed but with the expectation that the deal will be completed on Wednesday.
McKenna wouldn’t comment specifically about Keogh but says a central defender of his ilk is something he has been looking for.
"There’s nothing announced or formalised yet, so I won’t speak about any individuals until that is done,” he said.
"It is a profile in terms of an experienced defender that we’ve looked at over the course of the summer as something that we could add to our group.
"We feel that we have a really talented centre-half group and some really good young defenders in the building but for that department quite a young group, I think Cam Burgess is the oldest at 26 going down to Elkan [Baggott] at 18.
"So it’s a young group and we’ve looked at the teams who are successful in our division often and they predominantly include an older player in that unit as well who can help develop the others and help the team over the course of a very long season.
"We have looked at the profile of bringing in an experienced defender also to allow some of our younger defenders to get game time and if and when that’s formalised then it will be announced by the club.”
Sone Aluko has shown the value of an experienced head among the forward players and McKenna is looking for someone similar to join the defensive ranks.
"I think Sone is a really good role model for our young forward players in terms of how he conducts himself, how he trains and how he is as a person,” he said.
"So I think that’s fair to say that he shows the value of that in that front unit and obviously we have three really experienced midfielders who are all fantastic characters but I guess Samy’s the oldest one at 30 who’s had great experience and leads the way in that department.
"But especially compared to the most successful teams at this level over the course of a lot of years, we are very young in the defensive unit and it’s useful at times to have an experienced head around those young players.
"And it’s also very important that if we have young talented defenders who aren’t going to get regular, regular minutes for us that we enable them to do that so that they are able to make the steps necessary to hopefully be first-team regulars here some day.”
That is likely to see former Irish U21 international call-up Ndaba, 22, move out on loan. We understand Scottish Premiership Kilmarnock and League One sides Burton and Fleetwood have all shown interest in the Dubliner, who was on loan at Salford in League Two last season.
"That’s something that we’ve spoken about between ourselves and Corrie,” McKenna said when asked about the prospects of Ndaba going on on loan.
"And when anything’s announced by the club and there’s anything in place, then we’ll announce that, but that’s a possibility.”