Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna has shed light on why the club couldn’t bring in more players during the January transfer window.
While the Blues secured Ben Godfrey, Jaden Philogene, Julio Enciso, and Alex Palmer, they were unable to strengthen their striker options beyond Liam Delap and George Hirst. Additionally, they have limited right-wing depth after Wes Burns suffered a season-ending knee injury.
“We worked really, really hard,” McKenna explained. “It gets more difficult the higher you go up the pyramid because you’re only talking about a very, very small percentile of players who can come in and improve your squad or your team.
“We feel like the four we’ve brought in make us stronger as a squad and can impact the team.
“I think the squad’s in a stronger position than it was at the start of January. We’ve got pretty good depth across the positions and, most importantly, we’ve got a really motivated group who are all fighting for the cause. That’s a really powerful thing. I think the group’s in a good place.”
When asked if Ipswich have enough depth up front and on the right wing, McKenna responded: “We feel we have. Of course, we need the players to stay fit now.
“On the right wing, losing both Wes and Chieo Ogbene to season-ending injuries is difficult. Losing Wes so late in the window meant he was really hard to replace in the space of a week because players who were going to move were pretty much lined up.
“We know we can’t replace like-for-like in terms of Wes’ profile of a real penetrative straight-line sprinter who can attack the back line, attack the box, but also defend the box, defend as a wing-back, and defend the back post.
“So we have to use other qualities. Ben Johnson has played there and provides different qualities in the role, Omari Hutchinson can play there and brings completely different qualities, and we feel like Jaden Philogene has experience there. That’s one reason why we wanted to bring him to the club. So we have players who can fill the position.
“The centre-forward position… Yeah, I made it known that, ideally, we would like to have three senior strikers in the building, as I think pretty much every club would do.
“But the market for that type of striker is really, really small, to bring in a striker who could improve us where we’re at with Liam Delap. Even to bring in a striker that’s ahead of a fully fit George Hirst, with the understanding he has of his teammates, his work ethic, and his profile, is really hard to find.
George has been very valuable for us, and in his one start in the Premier League, he did an excellent job against Brentford. He’s now feeling really good and is fully fit.
“So we didn’t want to bring in a body for the sake of a body. We only wanted to add if it was really strengthening the group. We weren’t able to find that in the striker position, so that’s left us with two strong strikers, two young strikers, but both who have really good qualities, plus other players who can play the position in different ways.
“That’s what we’re going to be until the end of the season. Hopefully, we’re going to have a good bill of health.”
