The Shola Ameobi transfer saga looks to be drawing to a close today, but it's to the blue and white half of East Anglia where he seems to be heading after the Newcastle striker passed a medical in Suffolk yesterday.
Having long been linked to a reunion with his former St James' Park boss Glenn Roeder and old Toon pal Lee Clark, Ameobi is now on the verge of completing a move to Ipswich ? all of which leaves Roeder still searching for that elusive front man.
Town, of course, had a bid accepted for the Magpies forward earlier in the summer but it is thought that Ameobi was holding out for a Premier League switch; failing that, he was said to be keen on a link-up with his former mentor Roeder.
But with the clock ticking down until the start of the new Premier League season, it now seems he has settled on a move to Portman Road.
Ameobi is set to hold talks with the Blues later on today to thrash out personal terms after Town agreed a fee of around ?2m for the Newcastle front man.
Ipswich boss Jim Magilton has been desperate to add a target man to his squad, much like his Norfolk counterpart, and sounded out Ameobi earlier this summer.
Potential moves to West Brom and Hull fell through while Magilton revealed last month he had not heard a “dickie bird” from the Nigerian-born front man despite the striker failing to find a Premier League club.
The Town boss turned his attentions to Greek striker Angelos Charisteas and then David Nugent but all the while Magilton was keeping an eye on Ameobi's situation.
And now it seems the striker's plea to manager Kevin Keegan not to price him out of a move away from Tyneside set the wheels in motion to revive a move to Portman Road.
“I'm just trying to work hard and stay fit, which is first and foremost with me,” Ameobi told the Newcastle Journal earlier this week.
“However it pans out, that's football, but I just want to make sure I'm there ready to do a job whether it be here [Newcastle] or wherever.
“I hope that it will not be the case that I get priced out of a move. If the club don't want me I've been a faithful servant to the club, I've been no problem, so hopefully, in a perfect world that (being allowed to leave for a reasonable price) would happen.
“At the end of the day, I'm a footballer and I need to make sure I'm right.”
The 26-year-old – sufficiently out in the cold this summer that he wasn't even given a squad number initially – had found himself back in Keegan's thinking after the Toon's traditional glut of injuries left him with little or no alternative but to turn to the man who spent the end of last season on loan at Stoke.
Having picked up a slight hamstring strain in United's 1-0 tour defeat by Hertha Berlin two weeks ago, Ameobi returned to full-time training again last week and in an interview with The Times, he called on the club's executive director Dennis Wise to respect his eight years service and let him get away.
While always refusing to name names, it is thought that City have remained interested in Ameobi throughout the summer but boss Roeder has given every indication recently that he has moved on elsewhere; that a player he said would 'blitz' the Championship was no longer top of his wish-list after Newcastle refused to play ball price-wise.
Tired of banging his head against that particular brick wall, the Canary chief appears to have turned his attention abroad. Not that that has proved any easier as Roeder again suggested that the club concerned was guilty of breaking promises to the player concerned.
Given that said player had also 'done well' for his club last weekend, that automatically ruled out Ameobi who was sat somewhere in a treatment room on Tyneside.
However, his expected move to Ipswich represents a real chance for Ameobi to get his career back on track after an stop-start campaign last time out.
“The uncertainty isn't difficult to deal with,” said Ameobi in The Times. “I've been patient for a few years and it's been frustrating, but you have to be professional. I'm a footballer, I need to make sure my body's right and that I'm in the right frame of mind.”
The feeling was that if anyone could make the player tick it would be a combination of Roeder and Clark; the City chief did, after all, preside over Ameobi's best run of Premiership starts and goals when he was in charge at St James'.
His relationship with Geordie hero Clark stretches back even further to when the latter was coaching the former at their local Lads Club. It was those strong, emotional ties that always made the Canaries favourite for his signature – if the price was ever right.
“I've always said that I want to play football. Newcastle were my team when I grew up and that's who I want to play for, but football comes first for me.
“If regular football doesn't happen, I'll have to go somewhere else,” Ameobi told The Times. And now, that somewhere else looks like being Portman Road.
Tom Haylett
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