Town boss Paul Jewell says he was eyeing a couple of potential targets when he watched Huddersfield beat Sheffield United 3-0 at Bramall Lane on Tuesday. But the Blues manager played down tabloid links with Manchester City’s Israeli winger Gai Assulin.

Jewell confirmed that as reported by TWTD on Wednesday, he was in South Yorkshire to take in the game, joking that his target was a former Blues player: “I was there the other night. I was watching the young lad up front — Alan Lee! I was on my way to Manchester [for the Aaron Cresswell tribunal] and I stopped at Sheffield.”

While the Town boss has previously said that not all his scouting trips are related to specific targets, he confirmed that a number of players were in his sights on Tuesday with the Blues previously having been linked with Blades Matt Lowton, Stephen Quinn and Ched Evans: “I was looking at specific targets at that one. I went to have a look at a couple of players, maybe not just for this season but maybe looking for the future.

“In this job normally you don’t get time, but the way I want to do it is plan for the long-term and do things as correctly as possible because I believe if you can plan long-term you can make better objective decisions rather than thinking from week to week.”

The Blues boss confirmed that he has talked to Assulin’s club Manchester City about possible loans but isn’t looking to make a signing at the current time: “We’ve asked about a lot of players and I’ve spoken to David Platt on a few occasions about players at Manchester City that might be available for loan, but we won’t be pursuing that at the moment.

“I look around and I think for the future we want young, vibrant, hungry players to be in this team for next year.

“At the moment our team is very experienced but for the future we’ve got to bring in some young legs and some energy, some vibrancy which will help us to get the right mix.

“At the minute we probably haven’t got the right mix, we’ve just got a lot of experienced players, who are good players, but we need that vibrancy, youth and desire.”

Photo: Action Images

TractorRoyNo1 added 00:38 - Sep 17 the club is paying huge wages for numpties, the report last season said we paid 108% of turnover in wages to these clowns, since then evans has had to write cheques for even more has beens - god knows how his business makes money if he runs his hobby like this HARRY10 added 00:19 - Sep 17 seems to be taking out more than he is putting in. We owe him more now than when he took over.

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buryblue77 added 08:58 - Sep 17 Here we go, loads more negativety from many on here. People complaing about Jewells statement that we don't use or have sold our youth. I'd love those on here to have a go at football management, they'd either reassemble the '81 side living on past glories or wonder why the likes of Messi and Ronaldo won't come to us! Get a grip please, Jewell inherited a squad of players who weren't up to the task or lacked sufficient attitude (i.e. Priskin has demonstrated this recently) and to get out of this division you do need the right balance, but when a bid of £8m rising to £12m with clauses comes in for a player who's 18 and hasn't really proven himself yet those bids need to be looked at, the likes of Brown clearly weren't up to the grade and our current youngsters are either not ready for regular first team action or just not up to the task at all. I would say that Keane did more damage to this squad than anybody selling (or more likely advising the board that he didn't want these players so in turn they accepted bids as it is quite clear that he didn't have the same influence transfers as Jewell does)the likes of Stead, Haynes and Rhodes for low figures. I'd quite like to see a front partnership of Chopra and Stead/Haynes but that's all in the past. I for one am behind Jewell and what he's trying to achieve, I passionately thought we'd be in for a good shout at automatic promotion this year (which we could still easily achieve) but think it's much more likely to come after another years re-building.

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Steve_ITFC_Sweden added 09:51 - Sep 17 Anybody would think it's the simplest thing in the world to build a football team. Give the guy a break a while longer and let him get on with it! [Money in a plain brown envelope, please.]
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WeWereZombies added 12:24 - Sep 17 Alan Lee...remember those goals, Magilton should have rebuilt the bridges and kept him.
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Coolpooper added 17:45 - Sep 17 Jordan Rhodes would be nice!
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