Matt Tubbs is staying on loan until end of the season

The striker initially joined the club on a month’s loan from Bournemouth but the details of extending that deal until May will be finalised later today (Thursday).

At a press conference this morning John Gregory said: “This morning we’ve agreed on keeping Matty Tubbs until the end of the season which is brilliant for us.

“He’s obviously only had the one game but even in that one game we saw signs of the old Matty Tubbs. His ability to score, his ability to keep the football, he’s just such a good all round professional.”

Tubbs started last Saturday’s 2-2 draw away against Coventry and although he didn’t score the 29-year-old frontman did enough to convince Gregory he was worthy of a longer deal.

“I wanted to make sure he’s hungry, that he’s still got it,” Gregory said when asked why the initial deal was only a month. “Obviously his face didn’t fit at Rotherham, which surprised me, but for some reason he wasn’t selected as often as he could have been.

“I just wanted to have a good look at him, get inside his head, make sure he was still hungry, make sure he wasn’t just coming back here to put his feet up.

“And he’s not, he’s come back here with a big point to prove and I commend him really that he took a one month loan.

“He’s still getting paid by Bournemouth, he could have dug his heels in and said ‘unless you give me until the end of the season I’m not coming’, but instead he said ‘I’ll come, I’ll prove I’m worthy of a longer contract’, so we’ve agreed everything with Bournemouth and with Matthew, he wants to stay at the club and he’s just got to finalise the paperwork later today.”

And on the possibility of turning it into a permanent deal, Gregory added: “We’re going to have to see, obviously finance plays a big part in that. We’re just going to have to see what happens with him until now and the end of May.”

Tubbs has scored an incredible 38 goals in 39 appearances for Crawley at home and he’ll be looking to add to that against Wolves this Saturday at the Checkatrade.com Stadium.

“When you’ve got Matt Tubbs in the team, you know he’ll get two chances and one of them will go in the net, his record suggests that. We believe in him a great deal,” Gregory added.

Speaking about the possibility of bringing in further signings with two weeks left of the January transfer window, Gregory said things were currently ‘pretty quiet’ but that any potential signings could be done at the last minute.

Gregory also said there had been no offers as yet for any of the current Crawley squad, adding “I can’t wait until the first of Feb” (when the transfer window closes.