by YorkshireRoyal99 »
12 Jul 2023 17:03
Clyde1998 From Despair To Where? Clyde1998 I don't think we need to spend anything transfer fees to build a decent League One side. I don't think we're too far away from having a squad that could challenge from the play-offs right now - central midfield is the key area where we need players and at least one striker. The rest would be more about improving squad depth, as opposed to significantly strengthening the first XI.
16 clubs didn't spend a penny on transfer fees in League 1 last season. The total spend for the league was about £4.2m and Ipswich spent half of that.
Ipswich Town – £2.06m
Bolton Wanderers – £474k
Forest Green Rovers – £330k
Lincoln City – £307k
MK Dons – £254k
Cheltenham Town – £71k
Sheffield Wednesday – £50k
Barnsley – £17k
Exactly - very few clubs actually spend any money at this level, so a transfer embargo isn't going to hurt us too much.
Yeah I kind of get what you're saying really. Not much needs to be done in order to bring in a decent squad at this level, but I think to be challenging at the top you do need that flexibility to be able to spend. Obviously we have seen Sheffield Wednesday and Derby build good squads on top of what they already had to get them towards the top (and eventually up in the formers case) with freebies.
There are always some decent free agents kicking about, we do have some promising academy talents that we can now use and loans will be effective for us like a few clubs. But not having that flexibility will probably see us fall behind clubs challenging for the title and possibly even top 6. Clubs like Bolton, Portsmouth, Barnsley, Derby etc will spend "something" until they are up, whether that's Ipswich-level or not.
All this is happening without losing a few, which we will. Holmes and McIntyre won't stick around this level for too long, or if they do it's because they probably aren't good enough for the Championship.