Harry Redknapp targets trio of Championship goalkeepers
• Chairman reluctant to sanction move for David James
• Manager turns focus to Lewis, Westwood and Loach
Joe Lewis impressed Harry Redknapp in the FA Cup and claims he has been offered first option on the Peterborough goalkeeper. Photograph: Jed Leicester/PA
Harry Redknapp is monitoring the progress of a clutch of promising goalkeepers, chief among them Scott Loach of Watford, as he considers whether to sign a replacement for Carlo Cudicini and he encounters difficulties in striking a deal for David James.
The Tottenham Hotspur manager had wanted James, the Portsmouth and England goalkeeper, to move to White Hart Lane at the end of the summer transfer window only for his chairman, Daniel Levy, to intervene. Levy told Redknapp that in Heurelho Gomes and Cudicini he already had two good-quality and expensively paid goalkeepers and he would have to make do with them.
Cudicini, who Redknapp signed from Chelsea last January, is now a long-term absentee with the career-threatening wrist and pelvis injuries that he suffered in a motorcycle accident in November and, with Redknapp having little faith in Ben Alnwick, Gomes's current deputy, the manager has cast his eye for fresh blood.
James would welcome a transfer to Tottenham – he is on record as saying that "it would be good for my England chances to join an upwardly mobile club". But Redknapp knows that any move for James would most likely shatter the confidence of Gomes, who can blow hot and cold and, at present, is hot.
James's substantial weekly wage is another stumbling block while Levy is unwilling to pay Portsmouth's likely asking price of £1m, particularly as James will be 40 in August.
The goalkeeper has struggled with injuries recently but now feels fit enough to return to the Portsmouth team for Saturday's Premier League match at Fulham. He has played only one match since injuring his calf in the warm-up before the Stoke City defeat on 22 November.
Redknapp admires Loach, Coventry City's Keiren Westwood and Joe Lewis of Peterborough United. Loach played for the England Under-21s in the European Championship final against Germany last June and, although he suffered an evening to forget in the 4-0 defeat, has impressed at club level. Lewis, who at 22, is a year older than Loach, was also part of that Under-21 squad. He played well in Peterborough's FA Cup defeat at Tottenham on Saturday, preventing the 4-0 scoreline from becoming a humiliation and Redknapp said that Barry Fry, the Peterborough director of football, had come into the Tottenham dressing room afterwards to grant him first option on Lewis.
"Harry and I go back 30 years so we always have a bit of this," said Fry, with a smile. "We paid a club-record £510,000 to sign Joe [from Norwich last January] and he is on a five-and-a-half-year contract.,"He will only get better by playing regularly with us. He is on everyone's list, everyone has had a look at him but there have been no bids. We have no interest in selling him."
Westwood, 25, has forced his way into Giovanni Trapattoni's Republic of Ireland squad and he has been on Redknapp's radar for some time.