Town boss Mick McCarthy has revealed that Brighton central defender Connor Goldson had even been handed a squad number before his proposed loan move to the Blues broke down last Thursday, the final day of the transfer window.
As TWTD revealed, Goldson was at the club and had undergone a medical with the terms of his loan agreed before the collapse of the Seagulls’ loan move for Club Brugge defender Stefano Denswil scuppered the switch.
The Belgian side pulled the plug on Denswil’s exit as another of their defenders, Benoît Poulain, was facing a longer than anticipated spell on the sidelines.
"It was stressful for Connor, I think,” McCarthy reflected on the day’s events. "And I feel really sorry for him because he’d committed to me, to Ipswich, to coming here and there were lots of other people in his earhole trying to convince him to go here, there and everywhere, other coaches trying to convince him otherwise.
"And fair play to Chris Hughton at Brighton, to Connor, to Simon Kennedy his agent, who stuck with us all the time, despite everybody else trying to bend his ear and get him anywhere else.
"And then right at the very end of it, the player that Brighton were going to get, he was OK, they’d got their player in on loan, but the club they were getting him from one of their centre-backs got injured, so they had to call him back.
"And that was the nonsense during the day. Connor was here, he’d signed the forms, he was ready to start with us, he’d got his squad number, but Brighton couldn’t do the deal and then they couldn’t get a centre-half and I think they tried pretty much all day. It was kind of no fault of anybody’s really.
"And in the end I was made aware of Callum Connolly’s availability and we were going to take them both.
"I said to Marcus, ‘Can we do them both, let’s take that one and then at least we’ve got one and if the other one doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen but we’ve got a good defender in’. So that’s what happened, that’s the full story of it.”
While the closure of the window means he can’t sign players who are with clubs, McCarthy can still bring in free agents. Might he go down that route?
"Not for Saturday, let’s see how we get on. We might be brilliant and have a clean sheet and, to be fair, they pretty much have been so far, we just came up against a very good team in Fulham and they were better than us. But I can't say it was any fault of the back four or anybody in particular.”
McCarthy says there were no approaches for any of his players during the window, which he admits surprised him.
"There was absolutely zero interest in any of my players, which amazes me,” he said. "There were a number of agents trying to tout people around at the beginning of the window, certain individuals, but that’s what it was, some people being mischievous and no interest at all.
"I think they tend to forget I’ve got the numbers of all the people who are supposedly interested and I tend to pick the phone up and say, ‘Right, are you interested in whoever? No? Fine, that’s cleared that up’.
"Then if they come back after that then I would be a bit hacked off, I have to be honest.”
The Premier League has voted to end the transfer window prior to the start of next season with the EFL considering doing the same, but McCarthy isn’t particularly concerned about a possible switch.
"I’m not bothered, they all want to change rules and do different things,” he said. "There’s such excitement about our game and everything that goes on in it and the Premier League.
"People want to change it to suit themselves and when it gets changed, I’m not quite sure it suits them anyway. People want to change rules, change regs, change how we do things.
"One or two of them might not be too happy if it closes [before the season starts], they’ll be spending all their summer holiday doing deals.
"I understand the reason why, of course I do, that we’d all have our squads and nothing else can happen and it would then therefore make it easier and we wouldn’t have all these upsets where these big players think they can put pressure on clubs and move on, it does make it difficult for them.
"Maybe I’m being selfish, I didn’t have any of that, there was nobody coming in my office telling me they’re not going to play for me and they want to move.
"I had it the other way, I wanted players coming in here and they all wanted to play for us.
"I’m not bothered, as always I’ll get on with it, whatever gets thrown at me I’ll get on with it.”