January Transfer Window 2017.
It’s an exciting time for most clubs when those trying to push for promotion or survival flex their business muscles by bringing in recruits to bolster their squad. That’s what most clubs do, but as ever with Ipswich the feeling is it will be another window that passes the club by and any player that comes in will be broken down to the Mick McCarthy style of play pretty quickly. As ever I hope this isn’t going to be the case, but for almost every season MM has been in charge, not one player has maintained any kind of season after season quality.
So far, 5 days into the window the only business that has been completed by the Tractor Boys is Luke Varney (who was only on a deal until January I believe) has left the club and penned an 18th contract with Burton Albion. For Burton and for Varney I think this is a great deal. Varney who is at the latter stages of his career (not many can keep up the Ibrahimović, Defoe or Totti levels of play as a striker into their later 30s) will be chuffed to have gained another year and a half of wages, and for Burton, he will definitely provided them with goals and a great target man upfront. For a player who had such nasty leg injuries, he has one hell of a leap on him still.
But other than that, no signings are looking to land just yet. Rumours of Danny Ward from Rotherham and Cauley Woodrow from Fulham have been bouncing about, but nothing seemingly solid as yet. In fact, only this morning Town apparently had a bid for Wigan’s Max Power rejected, something that no one saw coming. The biggest problem here being the ‘rejected’ part. So many times over summer and previous windows have Town had bids rejected, it’s becoming the norm for the club. The biggest problem being the amounts of money clubs are asking for players have quadrupled over the last few years, especially since the club last invested ‘big sums of money’ for players. People talk to me about the large sums invested by Keane, but those numbers are fractions compared to players of probably worse standard today! Marcus Evans seems to think he can invest in younger players to develop, but they are going to cost just as much if not more than the experienced players brought in during the Keane years.
So let’s see what happens this January, but I’m not holding out for anything more than the usual loans and maybe, just maybe, the signing on someone like Danny Ward. The biggest worry is if the club DO signed decent players, will Mick be able to get the best out of them? I, along with many others, fear the worst.
