JAAP STAM says he hopes Tiago Ilori will not be the only arrival of the January transfer window – but he could be.
Reading got their first deal of the winter over the line on Wednesday morning with the arrival of Liverpool defender Ilori and while Stam says he has his eyes on more signings, he can make no promises.
“We are still looking for certain players for certain positions,” said the manager.
“It would be good to get the players in on permanent deals and not on loan deals because then you’re working with a player just for a couple of months then he can go somewhere else.
“It’s better to get a player in on a contract for two or three years and then work with them.
“We are still looking for players, it’s up to (director of football) Brian (Tevreden) in what he can do.”
“We’ve still got a bit of time but we don’t want to wait too long because towards the end of the transfer market, players get more and more expensive.
“It’s also a possibility that nobody is going to come in as well.
“It’s not a guarantee that players are going to come in by the end of January.”
Reading reported losses of over £15 million for 2015/16 this week and with ownership talks still rumbling on at the club, Stam says after talks with the Thai consortium this week, things remain unclear.
“We have spoken to the owners,” he said.
“They gave me an update of what they eventually want to do with the club but we are still waiting on if it’s going to happen or not.
“There is no certainty that it’s done.
“I told the players this week that we need to focus on the football part of it.
“We can’t have an influence on what is going to happen upstairs.
“We need to do what we’ve been doing up to now, that’s concentrating on the football, doing our job, working together, sticking together as a team and hopefully getting results.”
He added: “The takeover talk came out of the blue.
“Nobody had spoken to me about wanting to sell the club.
“It raises a lot of questions – your agreements with the current owners about getting results, building a team eventually within a couple of seasons going somewhere and then after five or six months a part of the club is going to be sold and new shareholders might come in.
“Of course I was quite surprised.”
Stam takes his Reading side, fourth in the Championship, to fellow play-off hopefuls Derby County on Saturday afternoon with skipper Paul McShane back in contention following wrist surgery.
And the Dutchman is targetting an improvement on the performance during the 1-0 loss to Queens Park Rangers last time out.
“After the QPR game everybody was very disappointed to not have a result,” he said.
“They’ve got a quality team as well, they are a big club, but in how we played we could’ve had a result. Of course everybody is disappointed in not getting the results but it shows us as
well that we need to improve in certain situations.
“We are still in a learning period. It’s not like ‘we were third in the league so we know everything now’. The players are still learning and need to recognise situations during the game – when can they take a risk in passing the ball or when do they need to be calm and when can you go forward.”
He continued: “Derby have got a very big squad with a lot of quality players.
“You’ve seen the improvement they’ve had in the football they’re playing and the results they’re getting as well so it’s going to be a tough game.
“There’s going to be a lot of fans over there so it’s going to be a great atmosphere but we’re still going to try and get a result. We are very confident in what we can, how we can play and what we can achieve.
“We’ve looked at them in how they like to play and the quality of their players so we are working on a certain way of playing and how we can maybe surprise them.”
