For now – and events may yet change again in the next ten days – keep your eyes on events at the Reebok.
Because according to my pal oop north, Norwich and Bolton could “both be fishing in the same pond…”
Sure enough there's Paul Jewell's name is pretty near the top of the bookies' list given that he's about eight miles away on the back-end of Wigan and sat twiddling his thumbs; and there's Chris Coleman. Ooh, and there's Steve Bruce.
Let's start with Coleman. And get this from Coleman's Mr 10 Per Cent, ex-Palace boss Alan Smith.
“Bolton have asked for permission to speak to Chris,” Smith was quoted as saying in the Bolton Evening News, denying that his boy was homesick and looking for a swift way out of Real.
“It's a very interesting proposition for him to return to the Premier League, but at the same time he is happy in Spain,” he added. “We have already turned down an enquiry from another English club.”
Mmmm. Wonder who else could have been beating a path to Real's door recently?
A Bolton approach to Birmingham in a bid to talk to Steve Bruce has already been rebuffed leaving Wanderers' chairman Phil Gartside to head in many a curious direction – bizarrely, however, not to Jewell's door.
If he had why then, according to yesterday's Daily Mirror, would he be drawing up a three-man short list of Graeme Souness, John Collins and Gary Megson. Gary Megson?
That doesn't strike old Ferret like the actions of a man with a Jewell in the bag.
Chat to my pal Gord and he said one, very interesting thing about the ex-Latics boss. That being right under Bolton's nose can work both ways – in that he can look right up it. And see just what a mess it is in, now that Big Sam and his backroom pals have decamped to the banks of the Tyne.
So if you are Jewell and you're listening to Gartside say this: “We lost too many pieces of the jigsaw, and we were not robust enough to stand it. We are in a precarious situation…” are you going to be running to his door for the job?
Chairman says himself that the clubs a shambles; you've got to mop up the mess that Gary Speed and the dressing room made in belittling Sammy Lee's every move and all with 'Le Sulk', Nicholas Anelka, sat at the front of the team.
In short, eight miles down the road and Jewell may be able to stand in his back-garden and catch a pretty nasty whiff coming out of the Reebok right now.
It might be a long way from his North-West home, but perhaps the man that has taken both Bradford City and Wigan Athletic to the dizzy heights of the Premiership wants to get some good 'ol country air in his nostrils.
He's ready to return to football, says my pal in the north. Not, however, at Bolton. He doesn't want that mess on his cv.
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