Why are we interested in signing a player that we don't think is worth £1m? Surely if we only rate him at £500k and he's already at Championship level then he's not good enough to strengthen our squad. If Paul Jewell doesn't want to spend an extra £250k to bring him to Town then he obviously doesn't care that much if he comes, in which case I can't understand why we're bidding for him at all. Is this the root of our problem?
Its not that simple. The only reason we dont think he is worth £1m is due to him being both transfer listed and coming to the end of his contract. If we paid £1m for him a huge amount of our fans would ask why we have wasted a huge amount of money on a player we could agree a free transfer with in 5 months time. If as you suggest we spend extra cash on him it also means we are unable to use those funds for other targets and there will again be moans of not strengthening the squad enough.
But surely 1 million is about right for a decent championship striker, who could get us 15 goals. We paid that for chops, who was a much bigger risk, who also had a worst strike rate. I think we're being a bit tight in not paying the fee, we should get him in now, give him a couple of weeks pre season and get him match fit quickly. He's better than Scotland and Murray, and will be an excellent addition to our squad.
Only 500k???....... ................................................seems a hefty sum to me... I'm glad to see Ipswich refuse to be held to Ransom.
You could agree a transfer in five months but you won't see him in an Ipswich shirt until July next year. In the mean time, he could get injured badly, have a severe loss of form, and he will definitely be one year older. He might be the difference in you gaining a play-off place this season or finishing in mid-table.
just a thought, but maybe you literally cannot afford his transfer fee? its not exactly impossible that jewell was given a budget and in order to fill the voids cannot pay what derby are asking for him and has tried to compromise but to no avail. (injuries aside) pretty good player in my opinion, probably worth about £750k so it strikes me you're both somewhere in the middle, which may be where it needs to be to get him!
good point Carra - I do realise where you are coming from but Im beginning to agree with Supers in the fact that we are skint and so waiting 5 months, possibly getting him for next to nothing in January if he is as keen to come here as reports suggest may be a gamble we need to take.
are we skint, or just trying to operate within our means? not being funny but everybody complains when clubs spend millions of pounds that they haven't got, yet the supporters complain when we try to keep our running costs within budget! I would rather keep Ipswich running than they turn into another Portsmouth!
Possibly the use of the word skint was not wise and I did mean more operating within a strict budget rather than a portsmouth situation. Its something that is going to become the normal practice rather than what seems currently to be done by only 1 or 2 clubs. I do want us to be run sensibly and would prefere us to be sustainable long term rather than run the risk of crash and burn but I also cant imagine we are in such a position that means we are restricted to sub £500k purchases. I like the fact that we are not prepared to go down the 'Norris' route and pay 5 times over the odds just because he is a number 1 target but it seems we are not moving onto other targets either. Its a difficult situation and I just hope that we have made other enquiries and are not going to be left short.
