In the Championship – Derby and Preston in tug-o-war

Billy Davies - Derby or Preston?

Tranmere boss Brian Little is now in the running while Burley has quickly headed south and has already been in talks with Millwall with a view to taking over there in place of Dennis Wise.

Millwall were all set to name their new boss apparently but then decided to interview Burley before making a final decision, there are no clues as to who might have had the lucky escape.

Wise has still not signed a playing deal with anyone but Southampton remain favourites although they have denied making an offer for Jody Morris his former team mate at the Den. Harry Redknapp is going to have to bring in a new midfielder to replace his son Jamie who now looks almost certain to hang up his boots after failing to recover from his latest injury.

With a fight on to keep Peter Crouch and Celtic keen to get Kevin Phillips on the cheap it is not the best of summers for Harry who I suspect might not remain at Southampton for a great deal longer.

Things aren’t too good for Ipswich either and goalkeeper Kelvin Davis has now moved on. He was all set to sign for Sunderland yesterday but was delayed ten hours at Malaga airport. It was nothing more than a delay and he arrived on Wearside today and completed his move to the newly promoted club.

Tommy Miller is also attracting a lot of interest and with Jim Magilton still not having signed we have been left with chairman David Sheepdip whinging on about changing the play off rules to allow third place to go straight into the final. It is a bit like shutting the stable door though.

Dan Harding - signed for Leeds

Further east and the legend Peter Taylor has added two more players to his Hull City squad. Sunderland full back Mark Lynch has signed today and last week they completed the signing of Portuguese goalkeeper Sergio Leite.

Leite will be under a new coach at Hull, Rod Arnold, the former Mansfield goalkeeper has left the club after ten years as goalkeeping coach.

Aston Villa striker Stefan Moore signed for QPR yesterday and said he is looking to get straight back into the Premiership, I suspect he might have chosen the wrong club if he has those ambitions.

Getting into the Premiership were the words spoken by another new signing today, Jackie McNamara who has joined Wolves from Celtic. McNamara will be in with a much better shout than Moore.

Over in the steel city Neil Warnock is trying to ditch strikers to bring more in. Danny Cadamarteri has had his contract cancelled whilst Luke Beckett is in talks with League One club Oldham. Meanwhile Warnock has been linked with a whole host of forwards including three from Cardiff in Alan Lee, Peter Thorne and Cameron Jerome.

I was surprised to hear that Dion Dublin had signed a new one year contract with Leicester. To my knowledge Dublin is English, in fact Leicester born, and has never played in Scotland. This looks a strange signing for one of the league’s two Scottish clubs.

Norwich goalkeeper has dampened down speculation that he is about to leave Carrow Road, that probably came after he realised he wasn’t Fulham’s target for a replacement keeper. It looks as though he’ll be playing in Delia’s team again next season. Matt Svensson won’t, he’s left Norwich and returned to Sweden to sign for Elfsborg.

Dion Dublin - signed a new contract at Leicester

It seems that the two players were never heading anywhere else than the Madejski. Eamonn Dolan, one of the coaches at Reading is the brother of the former Cork manager who signed the two players for the Eircom League club.

Reading are also close to signing midfielder Stephen Hunt who was released by Brentford at the end of last season. Hunt had agreed to sign for Bradford City and had flown in from Ireland to complete the deal. A phone call just after he landed sent him to Reading instead where is expected to sign.

There’s been nothing going on at Crystal Palace in the last week apart from Simon Jordan slagging off Chelsea for their approach for Frank Arnesen. I’m not sure what it had to do with Jordan or Palace but he was telling the FA to come down hard on Chelsea with points penalties given that any fine is hardly worth bothering with.

Poor Dario G is waiting on his players making decisions on whether to sign or not and he has told them he wants it all sorted by the end of this month and that includes Kenny Lunt who still has one year of his contract left. Dario will be wanting to get some money for him now.

Our look round the league this week ends at Coventry and they have signed Richard Duffy again, this time on a year long loan. Where Duffy will be playing in August is anyone’s guess. Highfield Road was finally closed after the Elton John concert but the new Ricoh Stadium won’t be ready until the end of August.

Coventry decided they would play their first three games away from home and asked the league for that but they were refused. They intend appealing but could find themselves having to look for an alternative venue for their early home games.

Do you remember Matt Jansen going their on loan and saying it was convenient because he lived in the Blackburn area? It must be close then so perhaps they can play at Darwen or somewhere like that.

That’s it for this week with news that we’ve made our fourth signing of the summer – we’ll be back in the Championship next week when Billy Davies might at least have signed a contract with one club or the other.