Town owner Marcus Evans says the Blues could return to spending significant fees again this summer, having largely relied on free transfers, loans and players available for bargain sums in recent seasons after paying out big money for players in his early years at the club.
Speaking in a wide-ranging interview in today’s match programme, which also appears on the club site, Evans says that if manager Mick McCarthy wants to sign a player who would cost a significant fee then it would be discussed and revealed that a large offer was rebuffed in January.
"If Mick identifies a player that will cost us, say, a million, then we will look at it and discuss it,” Evans writes.
"I will look at transfer fees and we made a substantial bid for a player in January that was turned down but I will always weigh up how best the money we have available can be spent.
"I work closely with Mick on that, obviously. I spend the money and he has the fun! But seriously I feel we work well together.
"I provide hopefully a stable environment into which new players want to come and existing players want to stay.
"He works to get the best out of whatever squad we have available and we both look at how I can support a year-on-year improvement in the squad.
"Mick’s shown an excellent recruitment in his time here and we invested in the squad last summer which I felt was a step up from the previous year when we got to the play-offs.”
He feels that injuries seriously hampered the Blues this season with too many of the more creative players unavailable too often.
"Ultimately injuries have held us back this year from reaching our full potential,” he adds. "I think the injuries to our creative players have had a big impact.
"I’ve heard the criticism of our style of play at home games over the last month or two but I think any team would be affected by the loss of their most creative players, their most influential players and we have clearly missed David McGoldrick, Teddy Bishop, Ryan Fraser and Daryl Murphy.”
Evans also writes about what he has learnt during his eight and a half years at the club, manager Mick McCarthy and the academy, and also brands the current situation with Financial Fair Play "a total farce”. The full interview appears in today’s programme and is on the club site.