Boss Mick McCarthy doubts whether he could have done any better with his summer signings even if he’d splashed a lot more cash than the small fee he paid Waterford for 18-year-old Jack Doherty. Eight of the summer additions joined on Bosman free transfers.
McCarthy said: "We did £20,000 on Jack Doherty! Maybe we’ve done a bit of shrewd business because what would we have had to pay for Skusey?
"We bid for him in January and Bristol City wouldn’t let him go, they wanted him to stay because they thought he was so valuable to them even having a chance of staying up.
"What would we have had to pay for Murph? All of them. David McGoldrick? Tabby? Christophe Berra, we paid £2 million for him at Wolves and we got him on a free transfer.
"I know we haven’t spent anything I think the signings have been good and I think with Freddie coming from Manchester United, Tunners coming from United, I think they’re good signings, I’m pleased with them.
"So, I don’t know if we’d spent half a million quid or a million quid if we’d have got any better. I don’t think we would have done. I’m delighted with what we’ve done.”
The Town squad will be far from the biggest in the division and McCarthy says a larger group can sometimes lead to problems: "You can certainly get disaffected players if you’ve got 22, 24, 26 players who all think they should be playing. You’re only going to be playing 11 of them and seven subs.
"The ones who aren’t travelling can be a pain in the butt at times. It can affect it. I think it depends, if you get a good start, if you start winning, it solves a lot of problems, let me tell you.”