Town have failed in their application to upgrade their academy to category one status. The club was told earlier today that it had missed the required 75 per cent mark in April's audit by just 0.3 per cent.
"We’re obviously disappointed to miss out on category one this time,” academy director Bryan Klug told the club website.
"The staff, in particular Helen Broughton, worked tirelessly to prepare for the audit and we felt confident that our structure is good enough to be granted category one status.
"We’re all disappointed, frustrated but we go again. Getting to category one is our aim and everyone is fully committed to getting there.
"I have spoken to Marcus [Evans, club owner] and he’s as disappointed as the rest of us but he’s fully supportive of us moving forward and continuing to push for category one.
"We have made a lot of progress over the past year and we will continue to make progress.
"We will be audited again next season and we will be doing everything we can to achieve category one status because that puts us in the best position to produce young footballers for Ipswich Town.”
The academy will remain at category two which means, amongst other things, that they will face the likes of Colchester United and Brentford at U21 and U18 levels next season. They will also receive a Premier League grant of £480,000, compared with a category one grant of £775,000.