Kieran McKenna will investigate the overseas transfer market for Ipswich Town.
In an effort to help the team maintain its upward trend, Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna said he will look into the overseas transfer market.
The Blues manager has so far signed 24 players in four transfer windows, all of whom come from British clubs, with half of them beginning their careers in Premier League academies.
McKenna reaffirmed his desire to find ‘young, eager, athletic and technical’ players who can develop with the team in its quest to make the Premier League while speaking at last week’s Fans’ Forum.
When asked if he would consider hiring foreigners, the Northern Irishman responded, “We are having a lot of continuing internal debates about it.
“Most football clubs would concur that having a core of players from your home nation and the local area, like we have, is wonderful.
“But because there is such a high premium on British players, we need to be particularly cautious of players outside of our market if we want to move the team and the club to another level. There are only a limited number of players who fit our criteria, and there is fierce rivalry for them.
We’d like to bring in foreign athletes that fit the four criteria I mentioned, but the procedure is not to be taken lightly. It must be accurate.
“We spoke about it a lot in League One, and there were some options we could have taken, but we made a conscious decision as a club that it was a really hard division to integrate international players into. We feel that the Championship is a better league to do that.
“You have to consider how long they will take to settle and what sort of period of time you can afford to give them. You have to be set up from a logistical point of view. You could have players coming over with children, or it could be a younger player who has to settle into a new country and learn the language
“It’s an area that we want to be increasingly competitive in. It’s now about making sure that everything is set up as best we can so that when we do recruit from that market we can give the players that come in the absolute best chance of succeeding.”
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Town’s chief executive Mark Ashton oversaw several foreign signings at previous club Bristol City to varying degrees of success.
Ipswich’s chief operating officer Luke Werhun, who worked alongside Ashton at Ashton Gate, said: “We’ve had experience in the past where we’ve had players come over, very, very good players technically, but really felt homesick, didn’t feel integrated, part of the country and it’s failed.
“With domestic players you generally know what you’re getting but there’s a premium to that, so we’ve got to try and strike the balance between the two.”
Ipswich hired Sam Williams as the club’s new head of recruitment last year. He previously worked as first-team recruitment analyst and academy scout at Manchester United alongside McKenna and his assistant Martyn Pert.
Pert himself has travelled extensively and is said to have a huge contacts list outside of the UK.
