Blues boss Paul Jewell says owner Marcus Evans remains as committed as ever but admits that there’s not a huge amount of money to spend at present. With the Championship moving towards a Financial Fair Play break-even model, Town are keen to operate within their means going forward having seen other clubs suffering from overstretching themselves.
Jewell said: "I’ve mentioned it lots of times, we lost David Norris to Portsmouth 18 months ago because they could offer him better wages. You look at Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers, it’s not a bottomless pit.
"We’d all like money to spend, we’d all like to improve the squad straight away but I’m big enough to know that at the moment there’s not a huge amount of money to throw at it.
"The owner is as committed as ever, but sometimes you need to give youth an opportunity. I’ve been here for 18 months now and I think we’ve got to start getting players who are going to be here for the next three or four years, rather than getting players who are going to be here for a year and are maybe past their best.
"We’ve got to try and get players that we can still improve and want to be part of Ipswich for the long-term future, rather than the short-term future.”
The Blues manager has said that he has failed to land some of the players he has targeted this summer due to players’ wage demands and clubs wanting fees higher than Town have been willing to pay.
He says the Blues have pushed things as far as they can but that there is a point where you have to pull back: "I think we have gone a little bit more, then when it goes to that little bit more, you want a little bit more again.
"Somewhere along the line you have to say ‘This is what we’ve offered’. We’re playing Blackburn and teams who have come down from the Premier League who have a huge advantage over us because of the parachute money that’s spent, but football has to be careful, it can’t just keep throwing money at it.
"I’m happy to go along with building a squad. Maybe last year we went down the way of saying ‘OK, we’ve got players who have played at the level and above’, maybe now we’re going to get players who are hungry to play at the level above and even beyond it.”
He says having too big a squad can cause problems and a small squad has its advantages but as things stand, his options are rather too limited: "We’ve got a good team, a good first XI, what we need is those three positions at least to just improve the squad. No disrespect, but against Bristol Rovers we had kids on the bench who are not quite ready.”