Town boss Kieran McKenna has been speaking about the club’s approach to recruitment over the summer with the Blues having walked away from prospective signings if they felt the player wasn’t moving to the club for the right reasons.
McKenna was at last night’s Fans’ Forum along with CEO Mark Ashton, chairman Mike O’Leary and director of supporter engagement Scott Paul.
The Blues manager was asked about the club’s scouting set-up, something which has developed greatly since the takeover 17 months ago, having signed nine players over the summer.
Freddie Ladapo, Dominic Ball, Greg Leigh, Leif Davis, Marcus Harness, Richard Keogh, Tyreece John-Jules (on loan from Arsenal), Gassan Ahadme and Panutche Camara all joined the club over the summer.
"It’s a multi-dimensional process really, it’s not one thing or the other, there’s still room for the sheepskin coat on a Tuesday night and, of course, live scouting is a part of it,” McKenna said.
"We have people live-scouting matches at various levels in England but there is the other side of it now as well, the data and analytical side of it becomes much more important.
"The video side becomes much more important because you have access to video footage of so many players in England and across the world that you can see so much more in a more efficient manner time-wise by doing a lot of your scouting through video.
"I think the process has really come on in, I would imagine, in the 12 months since Mark has been here but certainly in the eight months since I’ve been here.
"Sam Williams has come in from Man United as the head of recruitment and he’s building his team behind the scenes.
"They look at longer lists of players who they’ll identify, some through data, who will come up statistically well relative to the requirements and the profiles of each position, which we give them as a coaching team.
"They will also look at a lot of video footage of players who have been maybe identified by the scouts or come up well in the data or on personal recommendations and then will devise lists and profiles for each position who fit the profiles that we want.
"And then this will be narrowed down and watched and the recruitment team works very closely with myself and the coaching staff and we’ll work through those lists and narrow them down to a smaller target of players.
"Once we get to that smaller target, it will be about watching them live, going to watch games live, getting a lot of personal references, making sure that we know people, managers, players who have played with them, who have been at clubs with them to make sure that the character checks are all OK, that they’re the right type of people that we’d want at the football club.
"And from there we’ll speak to the players on a personal level. Once this gets done, I will speak to them usually personally and I’ve done that with every signing that’s come into the club so far and make sure we’re really aligned with how I see the team, where I see them fitting into the team, what their role in the squad will be and for me the absolute number one requirement and number one priority is the hunger to come to the football club.
"That’s been our number one biggest marker of our recruitment this year, I was really clear with Mark that if I don’t feel that the player’s running towards us, if I don’t feel that they’re absolutely desperate to come to Ipswich Town, then we’ll walk away from the deal, no matter who the player is.
"That’s what we’ve worked through this year and I can safely say that the nine boys who have come in are really hungry to be here, have all come in with a really clear understanding of how we play, how they’re going to fit into the squad and what’s going to be required for them and what their role can be in bringing this team forward.
"We still want to keep improving the process, it’s early days. Obviously, Sam has only been in as head of recruitment for four of five months, so we’ll keep improving it but I think the process behind the scenes has really moved on in the last period of time and I think it will hopefully go from strength to strength in the next few months.”
Ashton added: "Kieran’s very truthful in what he says there, there have been deals and players that we’ve looked at in this window that we’ve walked away from because Kieran hasn’t felt that they’re running towards this football club.
"He’s been very clear if people just want to come here for money, if they want to come here for a stop-off at the end of their career for an easy ride, that’s not for us, they’ve got to want to run towards us and what we’re going to do, and he’s been really, really clear in that. I think that’s been really evident in all the players that we’ve signed.”
Regarding keeping hold of those already in the squad over the summer, McKenna added: "The players, I can say that a lot of them are in the same position as well. I won’t name them, but I think we have players capable of playing at a higher level than where we currently are.
"But I think there are a lot of players who share the sentiment with me, our best players see the potential of the club, they feel the support of the fanbase, they know that not everywhere you’re going out in front of 25,000 people with a vociferous support, that’s at home and there’s a massive away support.
"Of course, with the better that we play and hopefully the better that we continue to do, you’re going to have increased interest in your players, but I think we have a squad that, as I said, are really hungry to be here, that see the potential of the club and see the potential of the team and know that this is a really, really good place to be right now.
"We don’t have any immediate concerns at all and I think the big focus has to be on keeping moving this team forward, and if we do that than I think the players know that this is a great place to be.”
Ashton reflected: "In this window, I’d lost track of it, but we did a little calculation yesterday of how many players we moved in, out and contracted - 59 players in, our or contracted over the window, hence [club secretary] Stuart Hayton really is tired!
"A major part of that was re-contracting and locking down the young talents, [Luke] Woolfenden, [Wes] Burns, [Corrie] Ndaba, [Cameron] Humphreys, those deals take time to do, but we made the conscious decision at the end of the season that we’re going to do that really early and get our housekeeping locked down, and I think that’s really important.
"Just in the names that I’ve mentioned there, that’s real potential talent and asset value for the football club.
"Again, there’s a lot of work that’s gone on. Everyone sees Greg Leigh, Leif Davis, Marcus Harness, Tyreece John-Jules etc coming in, but there’s a lot of work, not by me, by a lot of people, Stuart Hayton, [chief operating officer] Luke Werhun, [chief financial officer] Tom [Ball] doing the finance, pulling all this together to make sure that the housekeeping’s done.
"This club will be run professionally and that’s why the academy is really important, the development squad is really important and ultimately the first-team is absolutely key.”