Coventry City manager Tony Mowbray has said that the Sky Blues have struck a lot of dead-ends in their search for a replacement centre half.
Mowbray has been trying to find someone to replace injured Reda Johnson and told the Coventry Telegraph's Andy Turner: “I think we have hit a lot of dead ends on in our search, for lots of different reasons.
“It’s a balance between a young one and experienced one. Generally the young ones aren’t the dominant type we’re after and the older ones are difficult to get if their club is trying to get rid of them in January.
“The search goes on and we have to keep working with the defenders we have got at the moment. And yet I do feel as if they need some help because we are just one injury away from playing a midfielder at the back.
“We need to get through to the next transfer window and then something might open up with players moving on.
“Sometimes clubs pay up players and they might as well do some sort of compromise with them rather than pay them for the next four months and then there’s a short term contract for us until the end of the season.
“Ultimately, for us, in an ideal world we’d find a defender who could be with us for the next two or three years. But there aren’t players out there jumping out at us.
“In January, of course, there may be someone available but we’re not in a position to buy players. No-one in our league is going to give us players and generally the players in the league above are on way more than what we’re paying, so even if those players are paid up they don’t want to sign for two years for a quarter of the money they were on.
“If you look at foreign options you are not sure how they are going to integrate into the team and football at this level. There are the 19 or 20-year olds who are out there but not quite ready to deal with 28-year-old journeyman footballers up front, so it might be a short-term loan.”