Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna believes his squad has good depth following the closure of the January transfer window.
Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna believes his squad has good depth following the closure of the January transfer window.
Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna has explained why the club weren’t able to make more signings in the January transfer window.
The Blues brought in right-back Ben Godfrey, winger Jaden Philogene, attacker Julio Enciso and goalkeeper Alex Palmer.
They were, however, unable to add to a striker unit that consists of just Liam Delap and George Hirst and have limited right-wing options following Wes Burns’ recent season-ending knee injury.
“We worked really, really hard,” said McKenna. “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.”
Asked whether he feels he’s got enough depth up front and on the right wing, the Blues boss replied: “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 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 team mates, 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 a 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.”
