General manager of football operations Lee O’Neill says the Blues remain committed to bringing through their own youngsters, despite the January transfer window having seen them make four loan signings, taking their total to six, three of them youngsters from the Premier League or Championship.
O’Neill says the situation in January was far from ideal due to the financial impact of Covid-19 and the League One salary cap.
"I made the statement and Paul made the statement, it wouldn’t be our preference, we would prefer to have our own players to develop because you’re only ever develop players to go on to other areas, whether that’s the Championship or the Premier League,” O’Neill told TWTD.
"But the landscape has changed over the last 10 or 12 months. Two things, the Covid situation, that has affected the financial structure, and secondly the salary cap, that has massively changed the ability for teams in League One and League Two to look at [permanent deals].
"Where a lot of clubs would probably have done permanent deals in the last window, some 70 per cent of clubs are doing loans now.
"That’s just how the landscape has changed and we’ve got to adapt to that and use it as best we can to support the current squad.”
But he reiterated that the club’s long-term plans are still in line with the Five-Point Plan released in 2016 with young players being developed at the heart of the thinking, pointing out that plenty of Playford Road graduates have been involved this season.
"Absolutely, we still had four or five people play against Crewe, if you include subs coming on, there were a few more, from the academy,” he said.
"If someone had said a few years ago that you’re starting some games with 50 or 60 per cent of the squad homegrown, it’s a good achievement from the academy staff that are working very hard to continually develop players and a credit to the manager for putting them in.
"We’ve got some very good minutes in League One with academy players playing. If we’re not top, we’re definitely one or two in this league in terms of minutes played by young players.
"Last week we had Myles [Kenlock], Woolfy [Luke Woolfenden], Andre [Dozzell], Flynn [Downes], Teddy [Bishop] came on and all of a sudden you’re looking at five players. Aaron [Drinan] came in later but there’s another player there, so that’s encouraging.
"We’d love to get more through, I’d love to have a team with more academy players, homegrown players coming through, it’s about getting that balance right.
"Some are ready now, some are going to need a little bit longer, some need that loan to go out and get some senior men’s football as well in order to come back, as we did with Flynn and Woolfy.
"Andre didn’t need that, Andre came straight into the team and he played regularly, so it’s getting the balance right with those options that we had.”
Reflecting on the additions of Luke Matheson, Troy Parrott, Josh Harrop and Luke Thomas during the window, he added: "In the first half of the season, as you know and as has been well-publicised, we had a lot of injuries and it was very difficult to field the team that the manager wanted to field.
"From one aspect that was really good because we had a lot of young players go on and make their debuts and get appearances.
"I think going forward, calculating today, 12 games in five and a half weeks, Saturday-Tuesday, we’ve got to make sure we can sustain that and have the squad that’s going to be able to compete.
"So that was one of the reasons we looked at certain areas to try and strengthen, and add competition for places as well.”
The additions look like a financial vote of confidence in the manager from owner Marcus Evans, backing up his public statements.
"Yes, I think that the finances are tight like every other club at the moment,” O’Neill continued. "I think everyone’s trying to do the best they can with what they’ve got and we’re no different.
"Marcus has been very good in allowing us to try and strengthen the squad and obviously our main aim is to towards those top spots, so in order to do that we felt we needed to make some additions, so we were very supported by Marcus through that process.
"It was incredibly difficult with the cap because of our limit, we can’t do anything with the senior side of things, so we had to be quite calculated in relation to who we could bring in and the experience we could possible attract in that window.”
O’Neill admits Town aren’t where he hoped they would be at this point in the campaign. The Blues moved up a spot to 10th via Saturday’s 2-0 home victory over Blackpool but are still four points off the top six, although are now only nine points off Hull City in second following the Tigers’ shock 1-0 loss at Burton at the weekend.
"I think we would definitely love to be higher and we’re trying very hard to get back to [where we were]. The early stages of the season were promising, we obviously got a run of results when everyone was fit and we were playing some good football.
"I think that has been a challenge for us over October, November and going into December, it’s been a lot tougher.
"We recognise that and that it’s a tough job ahead and Paul and the staff are working very hard to get things back on track to where they were at the start of the season when we had a few back-to-back wins and some good performances.”
Lambert recently said that he wasn’t ruling the Blues out of the automatic promotion running despite the current position and recent form.
"I don’t think you can rule anything out in this league, if you look at it everyone is beating everybody,” O’Neill concurred.
"What we will have to do is take points off people who are above us, that’s pretty simple and easy for everyone to understand. If we want to be in and around it, when we play those head to head games, we’ve got to get some points on the board.
"Yes, it’s definitely an aspiration for us to look for automatic promotion, that’s where we would want to be and obviously at the very least the play-offs.”
O’Neill was one of the 11 players and staff who tested positive for Covid-19 over Christmas and along with manager Lambert was affected worse than most, but the 39-year-old says he’s all but over it now.
"I’m feeling much better, as normal as we can be getting back to work,” he said. "Health-wise, the virus situation is a lot better than it was around Christmas time. I’m well, thank you.
"To be honest with you, as much as I want to get out and do exercise, I haven’t done that bit yet. Work has been taking up most of my energy at the moment, so it’s all been focusing on that.
"I think that’s the next stage that I’ll try and hit now that the window’s finished, we’ll concentrate on getting myself fitter and healthier ready for the summer. But I definitely feel better than I did, that’s for sure.”