Town chief executive Simon Clegg says he’s delighted that the Blues have made three additions to the squad relatively early in the summer, even if it meant his family holiday was disrupted once again. Yesterday, Nathan Ellington signed on at Portman Road, Michael Chopra and Ivar Ingimarsson having joined earlier in the summer.
Clegg said: "We’ve made three good signings and we’re really excited about how we’ve enhanced what we’ve got up front.
"It’s been a challenge to us over recent seasons, we haven’t scored as many goals as we wanted, and bringing in Michael and Nathan is seriously enhancing our firepower up front.”
The Blues chief says that despite the club now having more than its fair share of strikers and with interest in Connor Wickham and Jason Scotland, the new signings won’t necessarily mean that other frontmen will move on: "It doesn’t signal anything at all, it provides the manager with a choice across the board.”
Clegg, who was yesterday given an honorary doctorate by University Campus Suffolk, says he’s had a busy summer with Town’s transfer business having started much earlier this time around: "It seems to move to whenever I take my holiday!
"Last year I went away at the end of the holiday break and all hell let loose, so I thought that I’d do things differently this year and go away early doors, and it’s been a fairly busy three or four weeks.”
Clegg says boss Paul Jewell has dictated the timetable and is more closely involved in deals than his predecessor Roy Keane, who left the financial side of signings to the chief executive: "At the end of the day it’s driven by the manager and where the manager sees the opportunities, and then there are negotiations which have to be done.
"It has to be driven by the manager and the philosophy of this club is always to back the manager, and we’ve done that with Paul and with previous managers.
"Paul has been intimately involved in the signing of the players, perhaps in a slightly different way than previous managers have been.”
In keeping with Town’s general approach, Clegg wouldn’t comment on any other potential moves in or out: "You know what my policy is, I’m afraid you won’t get anything out of me.
"When we have something to say, we’ll say it but I don’t comment on speculation or whatever is out there on the Internet. It’s foolish to do so and it’s a policy I’ve had since I’ve been at the club.
"However, it’s certainly fair to say that this isn’t the closing of the book until the next window."