As you will have read elsewhere my former boss Joe Royle has asked about taking me on loan to Ipswich.

They play in the same division as Reading and are actually four places better off than us.

At the minute it is only speculation as I am still a Reading player and will be preparing for our game against Derby on Saturday as such.

However, it is true that Joe has been in contact with my boss Steve Coppell and I am flattered because he and assistant coach Will Donachie, more than anyone, were the most influential in my career and helped make me as well-known as I was with Manchester City.

Joe Royle brought me to the club and gave me that opportunity and I am flattered to know that he is interested in me.

I met Joe when we played Ipswich a couple of weeks ago but we shared just a few brief words.

Just before I walked down the tunnel to go to the dressing room he just said 'hey, my favourite son,' just jokingly. I said 'well done to your boys' because I thought they had played well and just added 'keep up the good work, all the best' and that was the conversation.

I don't think the talk of my possibly going on loan will unsettle me, all it will do is let me know what my situation is with the club.

There is a time when you are at a club that you know that you are not for sale and you are not available for a loan. There was a time when I was at Manchester City when there was no way I was going on loan and no way I was being sold, but if a club lets you go home to consider this sort of option that would tell me they were thinking about my importance to the team.

Joe has had the conversation and what has been in the paper is as much as I know about it. I can only say I am flattered and if he approaches me then I will answer the question, but other than that I am a Reading player and I am just focused on that.

Our last game was against Nottingham Forest at the weekend when we won 1-0. It was a hard-earned result because for good periods of the game, and certainly a good 20 minutes of the second-half, it was them attacking us and us trying to get something on the counter-attack.

I played for 75 minutes or so but the funny thing was that I felt much better physically after the Cup game against Preston in which I made my return from injury than I did one game on against Forest. I felt a bit tired but that was probably down to the fact that we did so much defending towards the end of the game.

As I said, we play Derby on Saturday and that will be another tough game. We haven't fared well against those teams down near the bottom of the table and Derby are in the bottom three.

Hopefully though, the win against Forest will have renewed our confidence and we can run out with a positive attitude in the hope of getting three more points to push us nearer the play-offs.