Premier League sides spent over £370m on transfers this winter – but it’s Ipswich Town who’s business might be the most impressive.
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There are plenty of problems with transfer windows these days, from spiralling agent fees to the lengthening tendrils of global ownership groups, but those are conversations for another day. Perhaps the most immediate problem for most fans is figuring out whether the business that’s been done was actually worthwhile. There are always ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of every window, but it can take weeks, even months and years, for all those deals to bear fruit, even when it turns out to be rotten.
Still, supporters understandably want immediate insight into whether their team’s chances have been improved by their new signings, especially when the stakes are high – fortunately, there are times when a team’s work is, on paper at least, plainly intelligent or wrong-headed. We’ve already raised our eyebrow at the decisions made by our shout for the biggest ‘loser’ of the January transfer window, so it’s only fair to praise the work done by the team we think made the smartest moves. That just happens to be Ipswich Town.
To say that this was a crucial transfer window for Kieran McKenna’s team would be a fairly significant understatement. A recent 2-1 defeat to fellow promoted side Southampton has started to take the shine off some impressive performances earlier in the season, and they face an uphill battle to extend their stay in the top flight. The squad was pretty good, for a newly-promoted team, but there were clear flaws that had to be addressed – and they were.
How Ipswich faced up to hard truths in the transfer window
For starters, they have a new goalkeeper, perhaps the biggest single purchase they could have made. Aro Muric started the season as first choice but was responsible for a string of costly ricks, and Christian Walton, who replaced him, has a patchy track record as a starter – so the deadline-day signing of Alex Palmer from West Brom could be a huge boost.
Palmer has never played in the Premier League, but his record in the second tier is highly impressive, and he won the Championship Golden Glove award for the 2023/24 season after keeping 18 clean sheets. He’s solid against the high ball, comfortable operating outside of his area and a strong shot stopper – for a fee of around £4m, Ipswich have likely upgraded their team in a key position without breaking the bank.
The fact that the Tractor Boys seem to have avoided getting themselves stuck in denial about their weaknesses could be crucial. Other teams seem determined not to make hard decisions – just look at Arsenal’s half-hearted attempts to sign a new striker – but Ipswich have assessed an issue and made an attempt to fix it.
Similarly, they needed more experience and solidity across the back line, and therefore snapped up former Everton defender Ben Godfrey on loan from Atalanta. Godfrey has had mixed results in the Premier League so far and may not be a transformational signing, but he reads the game well and is comfortable dealing with players running at him with the ball at their feet while also having the pace and anticipation to deal with deep balls over his head.
The other major flaw Ipswich had to work on was their ability to break through opposing midiflelds. They have pace up top through Liam Delap and both guile and directness down the flanks – which will be further boosted by the £20m purchase of Jaden Philogene from Aston Villa – but were guilty of getting outmatched and bogged down in the middle of the park. They needed a player who can break the lines either with their passing or with the ball at their feet, and may have found that player in Julio Enciso.
The 21-year-old Paraguayan, who arrives on loan from Brighton, looked dangerous when he started breaking through at the Amex Stadium, scoring four goals and assisting two more in the 2022/23 season despite only playing the equivalent of nine full matches’ worth of minutes – but he missed half of the 2023/24 campaign through a nasty knee injury, and has found his game time limited by Brighton’s many other deft attacking midfielders.
If he can get back up to speed swiftly at Portman Road, they will get a potent ball carrier who knows how to beat a man with the ball at his feet and who is capable of playing killer balls in behind, while also posing a threat when getting into the box himself. There is no guarantee that he will hit his straps quickly enough, but he is a player who can offer some of the quick verticality through the centre that Ipswich need to make the most out of their pacy, dynamic forwards.
Sammie Szmodics, the £11m summer signing who was bought to be the first-choice number ten, has yet to thrive in the Premier League because McKenna has tried to play him in behind Delap, having the play go through him rather than making him the last man getting on the end of chances, as he was at Blackburn Rovers. As a false nine who led the line last year, Szmodics was lethal.
As a slightly more traditional number ten, he has simply not been as effective. He is a goalscorer, not a creator, but if Delap is going to be the focal point of the attack then it makes more sense to employ a player like Enciso in the pockets behind him. Some clubs would have insisted on trying to maximise their existing investment, but in this case it makes sense to look for a way to change things up rather than succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy.
Why Ipswich’s transfer work sets them up for the long term
Of course, plenty of transfer windows have looked good on paper and ended up as a damp squid – just look at the gulf between the praise West Ham’s summer transfer work received and the reality. Enciso may be rusty, Palmer may struggle at a higher level, Godfrey may not play as well as he did when he first moved to Goodison Park a few years ago. Ipswich have signed well, in theory, but may well still go down.
But the beauty of their transfer work, both in the summer and now, is that if the worst does happen, they will be left with an extremely strong Championship side. Players like Jack Clarke, Szmodics, Palmer and Philogene have been exceptional in the second tier, and Ipswich should be able to maintain the core of a team that can bounce straight back if things do go wrong over the next three months.
Plenty of newly-promoted teams splash out, get relegated, and then watch as most of their shiny new arrivals are immediately sold. Ipswich are less likely to have that problem, and more likely to have the long-term stability to take advantage of their remarkable achievement in getting promoted last season to stay competitive for years to come. Even if they do go down, their odds of bouncing back up are likely to be healthy.
Ipswich have demonstrated both common sense and a clear-headed understanding of where they need to improve over the course of January – and even if it doesn’t work well enough to stay up come May, it’s likely to pay dividends down the line anyway. That’s what a smart transfer window should look like for a team in a relegation battle. Now all they need to do is start winning games again. Unfortunately, that’s the hard part…
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