Boro hoping to sign St Ledger

12 September 2009 15:44
Boro chief executive Keith Lamb has revealed his club failed with a bid to land the 24-year-old on deadline day, but are still hopeful of securing his signature. "We have continued to pursue Sean St Ledger," Lamb confirmed. "Hopefully at some time in the future we will conclude that deal as a loan, which then turns into a permanent transfer." Lamb, meanwhile, has insisted Boro are now in fine fettle but again insisted they needed the money raised from the sales of Stewart Downing, Robert Huth, Tuncay Sanli and Afonso Alves. "The club is in good, sound financial state now," Lamb said. "Relegation did cause us a lot of pain. What was important following relegation was that we sat down and decided how we were going to get out of the division. "There's been something like a £25million drop in TV revenue, that forced us into selling the players. "The most important thing during the summer months was that the club survived that catastrophic relegation problem and the sale of those players and the income they brought us, maintained the fact that the club is safe, secure and sound financially. "We even have some cash available to take the club forward. "When we were relegated in May, we had a wage bill of £33m and we needed to reduce that considerably and probably half it to make the club viable for this season. "We've made great inroads into that, we're not where we want to be yet, but we're not far off it and the transfer income that we've received, the thick end of £30m that we received for those four sales, has given us the ability to be able to fund this season. "The club is strong and sound, I've got to stress that because there's been a lot of whispers about us being in financial difficulty but that's not true. "We would never let this club get back into the sorry financial state it was in back in 1986 when I joined, that's our obligation. "Our objective is to leave it stronger and better than we found it and we found it, myself and Steve (Gibson), in a pretty sorry state. "At the moment we're taking a little bit of pain, but the hurt is over and we're back fighting again. Steve Gibson has no intention of selling the football club. "The club is in good shape, we think we've got a good squad of players that want to be with us, that are prepared to fight and we think can take us to promotion."

Source: Team_Talk