JIMMY Bullard is officially an Ipswich Town player again.

The 32-year-old midfielder – a free agent after Hull terminated his contract – passed a medical late last night and has put pen to paper on a two-year deal.

Ipswich have beaten a number of Premier League clubs to his signature, the charismatic playmaker choosing to come back to the club where he enjoyed a superb loan spell at the back end of last season.

Meanwhile, Blues manager Paul Jewell confirmed that centre-back Ibrahima Sonko and winger/striker Daryl Murphy are set to join today once all the necessary paperwork is completed.

Sonko joins as a free agent having been released by Stoke City, while Murphy comes back to the club on loan – this time from Celtic.

“Jimmy Bullard has signed – he is an Ipswich player for the next two years,” confirmed Jewell.

“We’re obviously delighted because we’ve been tracking him ever since he was here last season. We tried to get him back straight away but Hull weren’t prepared to let him go back out on loan for a fee we could afford.

“Something has now gone on there – I don’t know what – and he’s become a free agent. As soon as we heard that we moved pretty quickly and managed to get a deal done yesterday afternoon.”

He continued: “I think it shows how much Jimmy enjoyed it here. He rang me Monday morning and said that, while a couple of Premier League clubs were interested, he would prefer to come here.

“Nothing comes cheap in this game and the owner (Marcus Evans) deserves credit, but it had nothing to do with finances to a certain extent. The most important thing was that he wanted to come here and we wanted him to come.

“Hopefully he can now have the same effect on us that he did last season.”

Meanwhile, Jewell – who will have made eleven summer signings once Murphy and Sonko complete their switches – says he is still on the look-out for more.

“I don’t think this will be the end of it,” said the Blues boss. “I have contact with Stoke about a couple of their players (believed to be Danny Collins and Ryan Shotton) but for different reasons that is not happening at the moment.

“They’re in the Europa League, trying to bring players in themselves and I think they want to wait until the transfer window closes before doing anything.”

Jewell also confirmed that the club has had two foreign trialists at Playford Road this week in the form of Czech Under-21 midfielder Jiri Bilek and 19-year-old Costa Rican defender Francisco Calvo.

He also refused to rule out keeper Richard Wright, who is back training with the club, signing for another spell. However, he admitted he wants a younger keeper to act as back-up to David Stockdale and Arran Lee-Barrett.