CEO Mark Ashton says the Blues have only signed players who are totally committed to Town and has stressed the importance of the club’s role in the community.
Speaking at last night’s Fans’ Forum alongside manager Paul Cook and chairman Mike O’Leary, Ashton was asked about the 10 players who have been brought in so far this summer, with more still to be signed. He says they have to be dedicated to the club, part of which we understand has been to stipulate in their contracts that they have to live within 20 miles of the club.
"They all wanted to run towards Ipswich, and this is the key piece,” Ashton said. "We will only sign players and bring staff to this football club, who are absolutely committed.
"Paul, Mike and I, and our investors, we’re not going to sign people who think Ipswich is a stop-off point to better things.
"Players and staff have to be committed, move to the area, be part of the community and this football club is only going in one direction and we will bust a gut to make that happen.
"The potential here is almost indescribable at times and I’ve said before that I don’t want to put a lid on things, I don’t want to say ‘we’ll get to the Championship and that’s great’. Why should we do that?
"There are clubs in the Premier League, there are clubs that Mike and I and Paul have been at before that are classed as big clubs. This is a bigger club.
"There is no limit to what we can do here. The players that join this football club have to understand that.
"When they join, Paul does all all the technical and the tactical and the football piece, which is great. I do the contractual piece and the financial piece and we work really well together in relation to that.
"But the other piece that I do, that is really important, and we’re doing it again [on Friday] with the lads as a collective, we talk about the culture and what it means to the community if you’re going to join Ipswich Town Football Club as a player.
"Because if you join Ipswich Town Football Club as a player, you’re signing up to something more than a player, you’re signing to a commitment for how you behave and conduct yourself and how you engage in this county.
"And I’ve had that conversation on a one-to-one basis with every player that we’ve signed, and we’ll do it again [on Friday] morning as a collective.
"We have the opportunity to build something really special here. So if players don’t want to join up to that, I don’t care how good they are, go somewhere else, because if you come to this football club you join a culture and a way of operating and a set of behaviours that you have to adhere to, and that standard we are setting.
"And everyone we’ve signed thus far has run towards those kind of behaviours, and I think that’s been absolutely fantastic.”
Ashton says it’s vital that the club builds stronger links with the community: "Absolutely. But it’s a way of working. You’ve got to totally commit to what we’re doing. Your way of life has got to commit to Andy Rolls and his performance [requirements].
"This isn’t any more where you come in in the morning and you train, you go home and you turn up on a matchday.
"I’ve been in this industry a really long time and normally what happens in a close season is that the CEO and the recruitment team are in, the manager comes in every other day and we have discussions around players. You don’t really see the assistants and the coaching staff over the summer.
"Paul Cook and his staff have been in every single day, and I mean from 7.30 to 7.30, every single day.
"That’s a standard and a commitment and the players are asked, in a different way, to do the same thing.
"And if we all keep doing that and working in that way, this football club can only go forward.”
He says he and the other club management will get out in the community: "The community piece is a really important question and the answer is absolutely.
"We’ve bought the asset which is the football club. We don’t own the football club, the community owns the football club, we are custodians of the football club, let’s be really clear on that.
"At all the football clubs I’ve worked at, the word community and how we work in our community has been really, really important to me, and it won’t change here.
"We’ve got a lot of work to do. We had a community trust I’ve been told that was disbanded some years ago [in 2014] and we’ve got a new community trust that’s in its infancy, but we want to work in all aspects of our community.
"That isn’t just about players and staff turning up at soccer courses for a photo with the children, this is real work, whether that’s in education, well-being, health, it doesn’t matter.
"We need to engage in our community because we need our community and our community needs us, and only together can we take this football club forward.
"It’s something that I, Mike and Paul and our investors in the US are so, so, so passionate about.
"Don’t get me wrong, when Mike and I talk to our colleagues in the US, we talk about the team a lot but, trust me, they equally talk about the investment into the community and how we work in our community.”