Tractor Boys maybe forced to another centre-half

Paul Jewell may have to stop breaking mirrors, walking under ladders and encountering black cats and get on with signing a centre-half on loan after a spate of serious bad luck fell on Ibrahima Sonko to add to a growing medical bill.

Sonko was taken off just five minutes before Ipswich’s match with Middlesbrough was abandoned at the weekend, obviously the duty falling to him to show referee Dean Whitestone that the pitch was unsafe but at a cost, the big Senegalese man being ruled out for four weeks with a dislocated rib.

Manager Jewell has got the cruxes out to starve off the bad fortune whilst releasing some frustration has helped too, “Every time we go on a good run one of our centre-halves seems to get injured” he said. Tommy Smith and Damien Delaney are the only two remaining fit centre-halves now Sonko will be absent.

After only bringing in only two players in the January transfer window in goalkeeper Alex McCarthy and midfielder Ryan Stevenson, he had bad luck with negotiating too you see, Jewell has been seeking to strengthen the defensive area but failed in deadline day bids for Portsmouth’s Stephen Henderson and  Joel Ward.

Now it may look like he will have to go back into the emergency loan market to see what he can find as Sonko will be missing until mid-March, his absence beginning with the meeting with Portsmouth on Tuesday night.

Obviously, Jewell can’t perform miracles and with his bad luck it would be totally out of order to expect him to draft somebody in at 24 hours’ notice, but he’s experienced enough to know that a month may be too long to go without his vice-skipper, so expect him to move by the weekend.

This could mean a revitalising of the interest for Stoke City’s Danny Collins who spent time on loan at Portman Road earlier in the season, only to have a move to Southampton fall through causing him to go back to the Potteries and fall out of favour faster than Abu Qatada at an anti-human rights convention.

Jewell wanted to keep Collins and said he would “fight tooth and nail” at the time to keep the 31 year old, but he obviously didn’t fight hard enough. Now though, could be the time to get his man as he sits getting splinters on his bum at the Britannia whilst an experienced centre-half is needed in East Anglia.

@AdamGray1250