CARLTON has begun negotiating with Mick Malthouse's management, with chief executive Greg Swann hopeful of quickly filing the Blues' coaching role vacated by Brett Ratten.
The former Collingwood premiership coach is the hot favourite to take the helm at Visy Park, but Swann revealed on Tuesday that the club had also made contact with Sydney Swans premiership coach Paul Roos, with "one [candidate] more favoured than the other".
"The president (Stephen Kernahan) has spoken to Paul Roos, he's had a couple of conversations with him, so that's happening as well and obviously we've made contact with Mick's management," Swann told the club's weekly show The Blue Print.
"Those meetings are happening and will continue to happen.
"That process has happened post the press conference on Thursday. We're into it now and hopefully we can get it resolved.
"Plan B was also obviously to talk to Roosy, but we were always pretty confident that we'd get a senior guy, an experienced premiership coach - which is really the criteria that we're after."
Swann rejected the notion that the Blues had entered into negotiations with Malthouse before Ratten had finished up his coaching duties with Sunday's loss to St Kilda.
"Everybody is keen to say that it was a done deal - it wasn't a done deal," he said.
"Even in discussions that happened earlier in the year, even when he left his last job, he had petrol in the tank - he wanted to coach again.
"He talks to people at various functions … he made it known to anyone that he spoke to that, 'I think I've got a bit of petrol in the tank', so we knew that he was keen to still coach and there were no other jobs that we thought that he'd be after.
"We had that sort of in the back pocket."
Magpies' restricted free agent Travis Cloke has also been strongly linked with a move to Carlton, but Swann rejected assertions that the club and Cloke's management had already come to terms.
"At the end of the day he's a Collingwood player, they hold the aces," he said.
"They've said his [contract negotiations] are on hold for the rest of the year, so just like anybody else who might be in the mix, we're waiting.
"If he says that he wants to leave then we think we'd be in the hunt, but if they offer him what he wants and he stays then that's where it is, but there's no 'done deal'.
"We're of the view that until he says that he wants to go … we've expressed an interest and if he wants to go we're happy to have those discussions, but we're not getting too caught up in what may or may not happen until he says he wants to go."
Swann also revealed the Blues' current debt was down to $6.5 million, with $1.5 million paid off in the past two financial years and a plan in place to make the club debt-free in three years' time.
