Town have rebuffed a bid from Nottingham Forest for Omari Hutchinson.
As first reported by The Athletic, Forest’s offer was worth £35 million, the same fee the Blues’ recently turned down from Brentford, the relegation release clause figure which expired midway through last month with Town now targeting a bigger bid, £40 million having previously been mentioned.
The Bees are understood to remain interested, while Everton, Inter Milan and RB Leipzig were linked earlier in the week.
Asked whether the was anything ongoing with Hutchinson at present at today’s press conference, whether there was any active interest, manager Kieran McKenna said: "I think there’s interest in lots of our players. We’ve had some strong performances over the last few years. We’ve got different interest in different players, I won’t list them all.
"He’s certainly a player of ours who has interest from different clubs, but there’s nothing really to update. He’s an Ipswich player and the club has real goals this season and everyone who is an Ipswich player at the moment has to be fully ready to contribute to those and be ready to help us have a successful year.”
The England U21 international was left out of the party which travelled to Auxerre for the last friendly of pre-season at the weekend as he "didn’t feel mentally in the right place” given the speculation regarding his future, but McKenna said he could be involved at Birmingham on Friday.
"Omari was training on Monday and trained well and then unfortunately has had a medical issue for the last two days, so hasn’t been with the group,” he said.
"Hopefully, if there’s a good recovery from that, he’ll be with us on Friday night.”
Asked how challenging it is for managers to be supportive to a player going through transfer uncertainty, McKenna reflected: "It’s about having empathy, and that needs to be the case on both sides.
"Of course, from players who have interest, and we’ve got quite a few players in the squad who have interest or different options, of course, you want to see it from their perspective and you do understand it from their perspective in terms of a player’s career being short and you want to support them in the best way with the career steps that they want to make.
"But then also as the manager, your chief responsibility is doing the right thing by the club and the right thing by the club is making sure we have the strength and the quality that we need to have a successful season.
"Of course, you want all those goals to marry up. We haven’t had too many instances over the last few years that they haven’t but the situation we’re in now, those positions, those priorities aren’t always exactly the same and that’s the natural challenge of the position that we’re in.
"I think it’s important that empathy is shown in both directions, professionalism, doing the right thing, sticking to the right values and finding the right solutions for all parties.”