Good to see the players we are bidding on are a step up in quality from the championship players signed last time around. Sadly can’t compete with Inter Milan, but shows the ambition of the club to recruit from around the world and not just from WBA, Luton, Blackburn etc during KM’s tenure. There appears to be a change in transfer policy for the better! Let’s see how many players we can actually sign before the season starts.

No nothing about him to be honest, but you win some, lose some.
Hopefully we will have other top targets lined up very soon.
We should look at,Senegal, Cape Verde and DR Congo,all had very good wingers,I seem to recall.

Great to see us looking at players of this calibre. Khalaili is a right wing back although he has played limited minutes on the wing previously.

A shame but we move on

It makes me wonder how much Ipswich are actually going to spend considering how many players we need

Well done Town . You cant knock us for trying I suppose....

Can’t fault the club but I assume we got some encouragement that the player would be interested before we bid, but if Inter are offering regular first team football it’s not a shock we missed out.

We need to aim high. And are. But we need to sign probably 9-11 new players. Assuming departures such as JP. Not long til the big kick off.

Not really bothered about the ones we don't get, only the ones we do. In this market today and now being back in the PL, I'd be a little surprised if we paid anything less than around £25M for a player in any position except goalkeeper. I also believe there will be a more expensive striker to come as we are still very thin on the ground in terms of quality there, even with the addition of Emersonn. Probably unfair to pin all our striking hopes on him at this stage of his career. Very interesting times.

jas0999… We have to aim high but within reason. We have to target players we can realistically attract. Total waste of time if we spend all summer concentrating on targets where we have little chance. Then we’ll end up doing what happened before and panic buying anyone we can get in the last part of the window.

"Inter-Bound" winger - sounds like he should see a doctor about that.

I agree with Monkey Blue in that the players we go after have to be attainable, because we have previously spent long periods chasing targets that were never wanting to come here; time moves quickly in the market from this point.
In this case though, it does seem like we were being considered, given the quote from the player's Dad. Had Inter not come in with their bid, we may have gotten him as our's was the other bid that is referenced; Napoli were way off it seems.
If we were not fans of the club, we would all chose Inter Milan over a newly promoted non London based club, were we in his shoes, once the fee & wages on offer were in the same ballpark.

The ‘great to see us trying brigade’ we have limited time, and resources, and it’s mostly one man running our process.

If you think chasing players WAY off what we can execute on is a good idea. Expect inertia, more Wes style signings and a window closing without achieving much, or late panic signings that ‘need to have a pre season during the seasons’.

This isn’t excellence. You have the networks, you do your due diligence, you don’t waste a SECOND on what can’t be achieved, because you don’t have a second to waste.

Every target has been months in the planning, conversations had, and none of that guaranteed success. The skill is in knowing they aren’t on Milan’s or a many much bigger clubs short lists. You know minor isn’t likely to offer and you know in advance. If we offered. It’s instructive of how poor we are at this!!!

Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford, Leeds. Sunderland etc etc do it very very well, we, it seems don’t do it at all!!!

Ashton can pick and choose in the EFL. With our resources, relative to other sides in league one and the championship with parachute money. If we want a player and he’s going to the EFL, we can afford to be lazy!! We can go bigger on recent success narratives, wages, fees and recruitment is easier.

At this level. We’ve had years now to understand it. It’s a whole new process.

You need networks. The players good enough for this level by definition never kicked a ball in the EFL, that’s a self selecting group of 99% of players never good enough.

The ones that are good enough and in the rest of the world purely because it’s a bigger addressable market, it’s vast, limitless, and many more players would walk over broken glass for an opportunity and ARE good enough.

We just need to find them. Talented enough. Good value. Not on other clubs radar (that are much bigger than us). That last bit is where our competition thrive …, and we have t got a clue!!!!

Marks running about looking at what others do and trying to copy. He’s behaving the same as he’s behaved (and had some success) before, but this is a whole new process! It’s nothing like what vaguely works in the EFL.

You need to understand Porto’s structure and youth teams and what their president likes with his pastel de nata…, you need to understand the Italian and French top two tiers …, you need decades of experience in South America and Spain.

And if you don’t have it. You do what Forest did. You bring in a director of football that already has all that!!! That takes three seconds, not years and decades. Minutes.

Ashton.

He can’t let go can he. Can’t get the right bums on seats. Happy clapping Ashton FC, and indexing our club to one person (any one person in truth) what a car crash.

Gutted to have such an amazing opportunity AGAIN built on McKennas coaching shoulders, and see us here AGAIN.

THIS is why McKenna left. He can’t coach the gap our talent ID provides (at this level) to be fair to him, I don’t think anyone can make Ashtons recruitment work at this level.

Players they either aren’t good enough, don’t want to be here, or young, which we know if we’re relegated isn’t sustainable.

There’s so little vision and skill in this - where’s the planning, Ashtons had two years or possibly 35 years building up to this window.

A week from now Hull City will have announced 4 new players. One of which is V high level, we can’t let them sail past us like Leeds and Sunderland because we’re clapping Mark Ashton trying to find a black cat, in a dark room, blindfolded, that doesn’t exist. It’s pure EGO on his part, his need to be the ONLY voice is bigger than his need to make us successful. He’s happy with EFL promotions and relegation’s as long as he has control.

Can’t we petition the club to bring in an experienced (at this level) director of football to take over talent ID entirely.

It’s too late now.., but going forward, we aren’t ever getting more than 25 points with Marks Talent ID.., Pep couldn’t get his signings up to the required level.

On a more positive note - the suns shining and there’s always hope, we just need 7 over the line next week.., doable.

Blah,blah,blah,.....

Dude, we were in League 1 only 4 years ago... Chill out a bot and enjoy the journey

Transfer dealings this week would suggest that Hull cant compete with Town not vice versa.

The players good enough for this level by definition never kicked a ball in the EFL, that’s a self selecting group of 99% of players never good enough.

77% of the England squad have played in the EFL. Across the entire world cup, including our best two players (Kane, Bellingham). 3 in 4 World Cup nations have at least one current or former EFL player.

Just one of the many, many nonsenses you spat out in that long rant. Go touch grass.

Would be nice to see us linked with at least one midfielder.

I actually think we have a decent squad and only need real quality signings . I think a goalkeeper and someone of real quality to boost the midfield , a centre back and one more striker

Carlo, problem is when we get "linked" it's all public and we come up against the whole market. I much prefer to get a sniff when it's "advanced".

We do our business much better when the first we hear about it is "Bid accepted" like Emersonn.

We aren't going to win battles in the open market against Inter Milan, let's be bold but accept sometimes the less we hear about them the better

Dodged a bullet there, if you'll excuse the pun.
Ex Maccabi Haifa Israeli ?
Yeah. that would bring welcome attention to the club.

absolutely no need for any anti semitic comments on this post

StowTractor - My above comment is in no way anti-semitic. You really shouldn't use words you clearly don't understand.

Stow tractor, do you actually know what a Semite is? Almost certainly not an Israeli, he could probably play for the Ukraine or where ever he actually hails from. This does seem to be "clickbait" but would not have been a good move especially after the Reform debacle.