Jewell survives again to make bids for Swindon duo

Slowly attracting the name of “the cat” in football managerial circles, not because he’s quick and agile (far from it in fact), but because Ipswich manager Paul Jewell is seemingly the man of many lives as he survives in the hot-seat at Portman Road.

After somehow recovering his team from being 2 goals down at half-time away at Barnsley in December to win the game 5-3 with his job teetering like a Ford Cortina off the edge of a big cliff, he has failed to guide his side to victory in his last five games, making it a run of two wins from fifteen games, leaving them languishing in nineteenth place after twice blowing a lead to Blackpool on Saturday.

However, Paul Jewell still remains flavour of the month with Simon Clegg at Portman Road and it is reported that he has been given financial backing in order to launch an eagle-like swoop for Swindon Town duo Paul Ritchie and Paul Caddis.

The two players, 22 and 23 respectively, have gone together like Tango and Cash down the right hand-side for Paulo Di Canio’s League Two promotion-chasers and Jewell has sent his cronies down to the County Ground armed with a baseball bat and intimidating clothing as they look to raid, to borrow another example of transfer lingo, Swindon of two vital assests.

Winger Ritchie scored twice at Rotherham on Saturday to net his ninth of the season while full-back Caddis is a part of the best in defence in league two as fourth placed Swindon have been more miserly than Dracula at a blood party by only conceding twenty  goals.

It is believed that Jewell is to send his boys armed with a briefcase full of notes in the region of £1.5 million to tempt the players to move up to the Championship, but Ritchie has iterated a belief that he can achieve that rise with his club, without having to pack his bags and move to East Anglia. “I believe we will win the league”, he said “if we keep playing the way we are, then we can get promoted”.

Swindon boss Di Canio has also appeared equally bullish in the news that he may sometime hear a knock on the door from Jewell’s boys for Ritchie, “I told him to forget about going somewhere, we want to win the league and he is one off the main parts of this team”. So there you go Jewell, no dice.

Jewell did reveal that he had made bids for 3 players from 2 clubs but remained in a look of Houdini-like mystery when queried whom. The tabloids have been quick to fire off the names of Caddis and Ritchie but with Swindon Chairman Jeremy Wray even quashing the rumours with a waffle-iron himself, these reports look wide of the mark.

@AdamGray1250