Ipswich Town spent in excess of £100m on transfer fees when signing 12 players this summer. Kieran McKenna has been discussing that.
In last week's pre-match press conference, it was pointed out to Kieran McKenna by a national reporter that Brighton were the only Premier League team to have spent more money in the transfer window just gone.
"Is that true?" replied the Blues boss, with an inflection that suggested he wanted to gently push back on the assertion.
"Net maybe? Yeah... okay," he added, with a disarming smile. Point made.
It's clear that the Northern Irishman wants to provide context to the '£100m war chest' headlines that accompanied the club signing 12 players in preparation for a first season at top-flight level in 22 years.
"Doing that wasn't just my decision," he explains. "It was a decision made with (chairman) Mark (Ashton) and the board. It was everyone’s decision.
“We had the realism about how quickly we had climbed. Our maximum signing over those two (promotion) seasons was, and this is not my area, but maybe George Hirst and Ali Al-Hamadi. We paid like one-and-a-bit million on a handful of players (Leif Davis, Harry Clarke, Nathan Broadhead and Jack Taylor other examples).
"So to go to the Premier League with where our finances and wage budget was at last year was an incredible achievement by the football club.
“We knew that we had to invest this summer. We knew that to be competitive in the Premier League, and not investing from where we’d come from, would be impossible.
“We’re not coming from the same position as the other newly-promoted clubs, Southampton and Leicester. They are teams who had a decade in the Premier League recently. Leicester were playing European football just two years ago and still have a lot of those same players.
“So we knew that to be in any way competitive this season we had to bring in new players. Spending money was an essential requirement really. The board were fully supportive of that and so was Mark (Ashton)."
Town spent significant fees on eight players: Aro Muric (Burnley, £8m), Jacob Greaves (Hull, £15m), Dara O'Shea (Burnley, £12m), Omari Hutchinson (Chelsea, £18m), Sammie Szmodics (Blackburn, £9m), Jack Clarke (Sunderland, £15m), Chiedozie Ogbene (Luton, £8m) and Liam Delap (Man City, £15m). Szmodics aside, all are aged between 20 and 25. There is limited Premier League experience between them.
“What we’ve tried to do is invest the money in a way that strengthens us for now but also, we think, strengthens the club for the future and protects the club for the future," said McKenna.
“Look at the players that we’ve spent the more significant fees on – a Liam Delap (21) or a Jacob Greaves (24) or an Omari Hutchinson (20). When you see (the comparative value of) young British players playing in the Premier League playing week-in, week-out and performing how they are, then you know, barring hopefully anything from an injury perspective, that the money has been invested really well. The future of the club is enhanced by investments like that.
“That’s what we’ve always tried to do. When we were in League One we spent a million pounds (£1.2m) on Leif Davis. That was a big story at the time. He was our only signing of that sort of size that summer, but it was seen as a massive outlay.
"But if you invest in the right profile and you give them the right exposure then that investment grows. If we wanted a return on Leif now it would be a significantly higher fee to say the least!
“We know the journey that we’ve been on and we know the climb that we’ve made. We know the finances in the Premier League are a completely different level. So to invest in the squad this year was really an essential and we’re really happy with how we’ve done that."
Town have so far taken two points from their opening four games, losing to Premier League giants Liverpool (2-0 at home) and Man City (4-1 away) before drawing against established midtable sides Fulham (1-1 at home) and Brighton (0-0 away). On Saturday, the Blues head to fellow newly-promoted side, and still pointless, Southampton.
“I would imagine we still have the lowest wage budget in the league by a long way and the lowest squad value in the league by a long way," said McKenna.
"So the fact that we’ve spent some money on players isn’t what’s going to make us have a good season.
"We’ve got some other gaps to make up. That’s going to be made up by our culture, our environment, by how we work day-to-day, by how we mould the players that we have into a team, by how we get the best out of them individually and by how we maximise our game plans. That’s how we’re going to make up the rest of the gap to this league.
"That’s what we had to do in the Championship. Now we have to do it on a much, much, much bigger scale in the Premier League. That’s a great challenge for the club, for me, for the players and it’s one I'm enjoying."
WHAT TOWN'S SQUAD COST
£18m - Omari Hutchinson (Chelsea)
£15m - Jacob Greaves (Hull)
£15m - Jack Clarke (Sunderland)
£15m - Liam Delap (Man City)
£12m - Dara O'Shea (Burnley)
£9m - Sammie Szmodics (Blackburn)
£8m - Aro Muric (Burnley)
£8m - Chiedozie Ogbene (Luton)
£1.5m - Nathan Broadhead (Everton)
£1.5m - George Hirst (Leicester)
£1.5m - Jack Taylor (Peterborough)
£1.5m - Harry Clarke (Arsenal)
£1.2m - Leif Davis (Leeds)
£1m+ - Ali Al-Hamadi (AFC Wimbledon)
£750k - Conor Chaplin (Barnsley)
£750k - Cameron Burgess (Accrington)
£500k - Conor Townsend (West Brom)
Low six-figure fee - Sam Morsy (Middlesbrough)
Low six-figure fee - Wes Burns (Fleetwood)
Loan - Kalvin Phillips (Man City)
Loan - Jens Cajuste (Napoli)
Bosman free - Ben Johnson (West Ham)
Nominal fee - Christian Walton (Brighton)
Nominal fee - Cieran Slicker (Man City)
Free agent - Axel Tuanzebe
Free agent - Massimo Luongo
Homegrown - Luke Woolfenden
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