Saturday's defeat to Preston, and crucially a host of results going against us, means we are looking over our shoulder again.

The simple facts are we are just one place above the bottom three, with a wafer-thin buffer of three points keeping us out.

So expectations were high, among Blues fans, regarding what Roy Keane's dealings would be before the January transfer window slammed shut on Monday.

Out of the door went Alex Bruce (which leaves us a bit short of cover at centre-back), and Tamas Priskin (who deserved more time to live up to his £1.7m price tag) on loan.

More significantly it was those players that came in, David Healy and Daryl Murphy from Sunderland, that left me feeling disappointed

When Keano got the job at Portman Road, I thought one thing he wouldn't be is predictable but his player recruitment policy has certainly proved to be just that.

It is almost as if he sits down at a computer, with a database of every footballer in the world, and the only criteria he puts in to find a match is 'previous club: Sunderland or nationality: Republic of Ireland'.

Murphy, who is a perfect match, is believed to have turned down a move to Town earlier in the season and is not a big favourite with the Sunderland supporters, not least because he has only scored 14 goals in 110 appearances (although he did score ten of them in their promotion-winning season from the Championship).

Healy fits the mould of the fox-in-the-box we have been hunting for but is renowned for not being able to transfer his impressive strike record in international football into his domestic game.

He has never started a Premier League game for Sunderland during his year-and-a-half spell there and the last time he played at this level he was relegated with Leeds.

In Keane's defence, he probably set his sights on bigger fish but when it came to the crunch, these targets didn't want to sign for a club in a potential relegation battle, and Murphy and Healy were the ones he could hook.

I don't think our signings are of the calibre to get us into the Premier League but that is not their task – they just need to keep us in the Championship.