New Blues boss Paul Hurst admits he’s been “surprised by one or two things” since taking over at Portman Road, which he believes are “nowhere near good enough” for him and his staff. The Town manager says the sale of central defender Adam Webster - who he doesn’t expect to be the last departure during this window - has allowed him to put his mark on a squad which he believes needs freshening up.
Hurst hadn’t anticipated Webster’s departure for Bristol City late last month, in a deal worth an initial £3.5 million, but confirmed that he had the final say in whether the move went ahead.
"Yes I did,” he said speaking after Saturday’s 2-0 friendly defeat at Braintree. "I wouldn’t have taken the job on if I felt that I wasn’t going to be making the decisions.
"I probably did expect to have him here. I wouldn’t have expected the interest coming so early.
"But overall I was more than happy to agree to that sale and to try and use that money to strengthen the squad overall.”
He says the Webster cash allows him the freedom to tweak the Town squad more than might otherwise have been the case.
"Yes, and I think it’s needed,” he added. "And again, I think I’m still very conscious and people might say I don’t need to keep saying it, but this isn’t a criticism of anything before me, this is about me wanting to put my stamp on it.
"And maybe we want to play a little bit of a different way, but I guarantee it wouldn’t matter who is manager, it all comes down to you wanting to win games of football.
"I think that the group needs probably some help, it needs freshening up and I’m sure there’ll be some more casualties as we move forward because, for me, people talk about standards and what they expect.
"We’ve been surprised by one or two things, shall we say, that are nowhere near good enough for us and we want to get people in that we feel are and can do the jobs and the roles that we would expect.”
Explaining what he means further, he added: "I’ve been told that some people are good players, that some people are very promising and I’d have to disagree on some of them.
"I’m not going to name names. Fitness-wise I’ve said from the start, I expected that we wouldn’t be able to perform the pre-season that we would like to have had and certainly if I’d stayed at my previous club that we would have gone through.
"But in fairness, in general, the lads have worked very hard but we’ve had to cut it back slightly because I think we would have broken them and maybe [they would have] suffered injuries more than it would have benefited.
"We’ve had to be a little bit cautious on a couple of occasions but in general, if you asked them, I think they’d be surprised to hear that because they’ll say they’ve worked extremely hard.
"[We’ve taken the edge off it] slightly, not altogether, but slightly. But it’s new and they have shown a good attitude to that, I have to say.
"But ultimately you have to deliver when it’s game day and, like I said, yes, we’ll be fresher [once the season proper gets under way], but they’ve got to do a lot better than they [did at Braintree].”
Regarding new signing Jordan Roberts, who will face his old club Crawley in this evening’s friendly at East Grinstead, Hurst says he primarily views him as a winger rather than a striker, despite starting him up front at Cressing Road.
"No, that’s where we’re at at the minute. He has played there, we just thought we’d have a look at him,” he said.
"He gives us a little bit of pace up there at times. But I would have preferred to have played him wide really.
"We switched it just before the end with Freddie Sears going down the middle. I’ll have to look at that moving forward, whether we give it another look or put him back out wide where he was really brought in to play.
"But at the minute we haven’t got too many options, in all honesty. We’ll have to keep looking at what we have got and try and figure out the best way of people getting the minutes and hopefully playing in positions that we want them to.”
....Smile for the camera Gwion ðŸ"¸#ITFC pic.twitter.com/kWb3NOO7JG– Blue Monday Podcast (@BlueMondayITFC) July 16, 2018
Meanwhile, Town look set to confirm the signing of Peterborough United winger Gwion Edwards at some point today.
The 25-year-old was spotted being photographed in a Blues shirt at Portman Road last night with the image subsequently circulating widely on social media. Club photocalls routinely take place before deals are finalised.
Former Wales U21 international Edwards will join Town for a fee of £700,000 which was agreed at the end of last week.