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Ashton: Five In, But That's Not the End of It - Ipswich Town News

Blues CEO Mark Ashton says the five signings Town have made this summer aren’t the full extent of the business the club will do before the season opens at home to Liverpool on Saturday 17th August.

So far the Blues have brought in former loanee Omari Hutchinson, right-back Ben Johnson, striker Liam Delap, centre-half Jacob Greaves and keeper Aro Muric. But Ashton says there will be more additions to come.

"It’s a tough window,” he told TownTV. "We’re swimming in a bigger pond than we’ve ever swum in before. It’s the same challenges, just with different numbers, much bigger numbers,

"And when you’re dealing with much bigger numbers, your room for error is far less. I think what you’ve seen with myself and [manager] Kieran [McKenna] is that we’ve stuck to the plan.

"Very talented people who have come into the building on the pitch, who will grow with us. And Kieran’s been very clear and very diligent in the work that he’s being doing.

"Five in, and that’s not the end of it. Fans will understand we are proactive in transfer windows.

"I think we’ve done decent business in previous windows in other leagues and I think we’ll continue and you’ll see more players over the next few weeks arrive ahead of the season.”

Reflecting on how he has found working in the Premier League market, he added: "It’s as tough as I expected, negotiations are probably tougher than ever because you’ve got to get value.

"It’s very easy to overpay and if you overpay on the way in in a deal, the deal’s never right, you’re struggling from day one.

"The due diligence we do on the type of player, the personality, the finances, the technical, the tactical piece from Kieran all has to come together.

"Myself and Kieran lead on that, [chief operating officer] Luke Werhun has been absolutely invaluable in the work he’s done behind the scenes, he’s certainly got more grey hairs this summer.

"It’s relentless, but that’s what we do. We don’t sing and dance, we don’t talk into the media what we’re doing. I think the fans have been great, I think they’ve been really controlled in the way they’ve talked about who we’re looking to bring in, which has helped us again. And we’ll keep going, there’s more to do.”

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