Blues CEO and chairman Mark Ashton admits it’s been a tough transfer window and he’s glad that it’s now shut.

Town signed 11 players over the summer with 14 moving on, although those raw numbers don’t tell the full story of a window which saw record fees received for first Liam Delap, £30 million, and then Omari Hutchinson, £37.5 million, on-off deals for incoming signings, players withdrawing from fixtures while interest was ongoing, four signings in the last week, including one from Norwich City, and then two of the stars of the back-to-back promotions leave on deadline day.

Speaking in an interview for TownTV with former skipper Matt Holland, now a club director, alongside manager Kieran McKenna, Ashton admitted he was glad the window had come to an end.

“Yes. I think I always am, to be honest,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been in a transfer window for about a year. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken so much.

“From the moment we got promoted to the Premier League, I genuinely feel like I’ve been in a transfer window consistently.

“And that’s OK, but anyone who works in this industry will tell you that that’s tough because it moves on a hourly basis, let alone a daily basis.

“I’m always glad when it’s shut, we have to be ready for the next one, that will come around pretty quick. It’s been tough.”

Asked why it was so tough, he reflected: “A club that’s been outside the top flight for 20 years, has had back-to-back promotions to the Premier League, the one thing you can’t buy is time.

“It’s impossible to be prepared and you’re always chasing time with infrastructure, staff, resource, knowledge. You just can’t get enough time, you can’t get ahead of the curve and recruitment’s the key part of that.

“Historically now, every club that gets promoted from the Championship to the Premier League finds it really tough, particularly in that first season. When you’ve been out of the top flight for 20 years, only had one season in the Championship to stabilise and then have got to bounce and go again, it’s really tough.

“We pushed the envelope financially with regard to Financial Fair Play, the board and ownership were fantastic and I think the players we recruited primarily were good asset values for us, and that’s been shown this summer.

“But it’s tough. And that jump from the Championship to the Premier League is going to get no easier, that’s for sure.

“And I think the other big thing for that is that when we got promoted we recruited players, the Delaps, Omaris on permanent deals, that’s not easy. There are a lot of people involved from Kieran, myself, recruitment staff etc to get those players into the club because they’re sought-after.

“What Kieran did then was, even though we weren’t winning every week, was an incredible job at developing that talent.

“And that showed probably from May onwards when we started to hear the noise around Liam. A consequence of our success in recruiting and developing players was that other clubs wanted those players and were prepared to pay big money for those players.

“I think it’s important that the fanbase understand that the first thing we did was Liam was try and persuade him to stay at this football club, and I don’t think from a football perspective or a financial perspective that was an issue, it was simply his desire to play in the top league.

“Omari was similar. A different story. Axel [Tuanzebe] the same and I can understand that and its frustrating for us but Kieran’s development of the talent allowed us to drive from two players almost £70 million of income to this football club.

“This football club’s never done that before and if we’d said three years ago we were going to do that, I think people would probably have laughed at us. That brings challenges.

“If you look at the industry as a whole right now and you see some of the challenges big clubs like Newcastle are having, we’ve had similar challenges here trying to retain some of the players.

“Whether it was those two boys, whether it was Nathan Broadhead or whether it was a handful of other players, let’s be really clear, because of the recruitment and development Kieran’s put into them, top league clubs wanted to buy them and we had to fight them off.

“Ultimately, some have moved on but that brings challenges in retaining before you’ve even got to bringing others in.”

Photo: TownTV

BurleysGloryDays added 20:41 - Sep 5 Superb as always
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poet added 21:29 - Sep 5 Hopefully some fans who have had far too eager and unrealistic expectations for the start of this season, will have had their feet firmly planted on the ground by Ashton’s words. Starting at a canter considering the number a of adjustments that have had to be made, was never a realistic expectation. However, in my opinion, those adjustments to this squad will soon pay dividends, and we’ll be climbing the table,

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MickMillsTash added 21:42 - Sep 5 Would be really interesting if he published a diary of the last 5 months Ultimately all will be judged on how many wins we get
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