Bruce On Targets & Exits

Steve Bruce has confirmed that Blues are talking to Bolton’s Tunisian international defender Radhi Jaidi.

‘We are talking with Bolton.’ Explaining: ‘I am just looking at the overall picture. Upson will be missing until Christmas and I am trying to create a situation where we have a couple of key people for every position, if that’s possible. We got Bruno N’Gotty and I think we saw today against Nancy just what experience he has. And it will be nice if we can get his mate in from Bolton.’

He also says that they are looking at Coventry striker Gary McSheffrey: ‘We need another striker as well. We found to our cost last season that going into the season with only three strikers is not healthy. We made a renewed bid on Friday for McSheffrey and we’re hoping that we can do some business there but obviously he is still Coventry’s player at the moment.’

But at least we can take some consolation that links to ex-Wolves and Manchester United midfielder Paul Ince are unfounded as Bruce laughed saying: ‘He’s older than me.’

He continued ‘We let 11 players who were out of contract or on-loan go and also sold Emile and Jermaine.’ adding that he understands the fans ‘frustrations but it is up to me now to make sure that with that money I can go and get three or four players to make sure that we are really competitive in this division. Obviously the money we got for Jermaine is burning a hole in my pocket! But the difficulty we are finding is getting the right players to come. They have to meet a certain criteria now.’