Town are yet to talk to Brighton, Southend and Darlington about Matt Richards, Dan Harding and Billy Clarke joining their loan clubs on a permanent basis. Chief executive Derek Bowden says the Blues are likely to bring Chris Casement back from Hamilton in January before sending him out on loan elsewhere.

Richards has said he is keen to join the Seagulls permanently in January and manager Micky Adams has also confirmed that he wants to do a deal, but Bowden says the clubs are yet to discuss a possible deal: "There have been no talks since they took him in the summer when it was seen as a window-to-window loan with a judgement in January.

"They may well want to take him permanently, but I've not spoken to Brighton specifically about that or to Southend about Dan Harding.

"We'll let it run through to January and see how they play and how they like it and then if there's interest from both clubs we'll consider it then.”

Many fans are keen for Clarke to return and be given his chance with the Blues after a successful spell with the Quakers, but Bowden says the Irishman, who is out of contract next summer, could be allowed to move on for good: "He's there until January and we'll take a view then if they show some interest on loan or permanently.

"There's a lot of competition up front at the moment with Jordan Rhodes hovering around the bench. We'll see how it goes in the next couple of months.”

Northern Irish defender Chris Casement looks set for another loan spell after rarely featuring for Hamilton Academical since joining them in August: "As he's not playing at Hamilton I think we'll bring him back and get him another position where he does play.

"Interestingly, they pay us more if he doesn't play. We've tried to structure loan deals like that because when we send players out on loan we want them to play.

"What we've said to some of the clubs in the lower divisions or in Scotland with players who are not on huge wages is that if they play the player, then they give us X and if they don't play the player, they pay us X plus a further sum.”

Bowden says the Blues are not allowing any of the loanees to play in this weekend's FA Cup first round: "The reason being that if we brought them back, we'd want them to be able to play for us, but also if we were selling them in January we wouldn't want them to be cup-tied.”

Dean Bowditch and Liam Trotter are on shorter term loans at Brentford and Grimsby respectively and their situations are currently being looked at on a month-to-month basis.

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