Transfer Time Running Out

With a week left until the closing of the transfer window, and Jim intent on adding several players to the current squad, John is frustrated at the repeated attempts to sign players that evidently are not interested in a move.

In her column last week, Emma seems to have touched on an aspect of Jims transfer policy which has been slowly driving me mad.

Ideas Above Our Station?

We are seemingly desperate to sign a new forward. We have been desperate since January, where repeated attempts to bring in David Nugent and David Healy inevitably failed. Back then, it left us short when Jon Walters got injured and Pablo was suspended.

We are still short now, although the addition of Kevin Lisbie has no doubt helped, and the continued failings of Alan Lee exacerbate it. Yet we are still looking and we are STILL trying to bring in players that are patently not going to come. If you took a straw poll of Ipswich fans and asked them if they thought Charisteas, Nugent or Healy were going to come and play for Ipswich, or hold out for better offers from the Premiership/Bundesliga, I know where the majority would vote. Perhaps if Jim did that in the first place, he could have saved a whole lot of time and negotiation.

Because, despite discussions with the clubs, not one of these players has actually seen fit to sit down and talk to Jim about a transfer. They werent interested. The latest story is that we have bid £2.8m for a Slovenian currently playing in the Bundesliga. His club have turned it down. Yet what will it take to persuade a player to uproot and move country, to drop a level of football, on the premise of helping Ipswich Town win promotion? It seems implausible that this deal will happen either.

Its time for Jim to get realistic and look towards players that we can reasonably attract to the club. International strikers playing in top level leagues are not them. If we fail to bring in a forward at all by end of this transfer window, after chasing extravagant and fanciful targets, Jim may well have written his own "by mutual consent" press release.