Town manager Paul Jewell says that ideally he’d love to have all his summer signings at the club when pre-season training starts on June 29th but admits that that’s not a realistic prospect. The Blues boss says he has his summer plans in place and has held long meetings with owner and chairman Marcus Evans as he looks towards his first full season in charge at Portman Road.
Jewell said: "Every manager will tell you that you he would like to have his squad on the first day of pre-season, but that isn’t going to happen.
"I said this every single season I’ve been a manager, but you never do. But if we can get a few in before we start training on 29th June, if we can get as much business done between now and then all the better, but that’s naïve really because at the end of the day things come along and situations change — you might get an injury to a key player that you might need to replace.
"It’s not like the season finishes and we start looking, we’ve been looking for a while anyway to try to put things in place for next season.”
The Town manager says he knows what he has to do in the summer: "We’ve got plans. Obviously everyone’s restricted by budgets, whoever you are, unless you’re Manchester City. We’ve have plans to try to improve the squad and to improve on the season we’ve had this year.
"That’s the only goal, we’re not going to make any promises other than that I know I’ll give everything I’ve got to try to improve the team and improve the squad and improve on the season we’ve had.
"A club of this size, in our supporters’ eyes, should be pushing near the top end rather than being in mid-table.
"But, having said that, we’re in a league with about 14 teams of that ilk. We’re all trying to chase the same type of players for next season, but hopefully, if we can, we can get in quicker than most.”
Jewell says he has liaised closely with Marcus Evans over a number of conversations, including a recent five-hour discussion with the owner and chief executive Simon Clegg at Evans’s Dublin HQ: "I’ve spoken to the owner, I think he’s away at the moment.
"We’ve sat down and had two or three long meetings about what we’re going to try and do next season recruitment-wise.
"As long as people are straight with me, I have no problem with that. I know exactly what we’ve got and what we haven’t got and I’ll get on with it and try and improve [the squad].”