The Blues spent well over a £100m ahead of their first season back in the Premier League 2024/25, although it wasn’t enough to prevent relegation back to the Championship.
Now with a stronger squad, Maguire believes that Town will likely look to sign ‘four or five’ Premier League-quality players to strengthen the starting line-up, although paying wages may be a bigger issue than shelling out for transfer fees.
Ipswich Town are back for another crack at the Premier Legaue (Image: Steve Waller)
“It will be beneficial for the club, getting promoted, but I think if you’re realistic, you’re probably looking to sign four or five players who you’d hope to be of Premier League quality,” he told the East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star.
“The advantage that Ipswich have got compared to two seasons ago, following back-to-back promotions when they bought extremely well in both League One and the Championship, is that they had to spend a lot of money to boost the overall quality of the squad.
“I think you can be more targeted this season, because you do have players who have a different experience.
Back-to-back promotions proved to be too much of a jump when the Blues reached the Premier League in 2024/25 (Image: PA)
“Playing Saturday – Tuesday football, which you do on an awful lot of occasions in the Championship, is completely different to the environment in which you are playing a match on the weekend.
“You then do light training on Monday and spend the rest of the week with your drills, with your analysis teams. There’s so much more preparation time in the Premier League, therefore you do need a different type of football player.
“Ipswich, because they had that one experience of the Premier League, have some of those players. They don’t need to get 16 players of Premier League quality – you can’t do that in your very first season in the Premier League. You’ve got some of the hangover from your last season.
“There’s still an issue in terms of wages. I’m looking at the wage bills for the clubs in the Premier League – Ipswich Town’s wage bill for 2024/25 was £77m. That was the lowest in the Premier League that season.
Kieran McKenna faces another tough challenge to keep Town in the Premier League (Image: Ross Halls)
“Not only was it the lowest, it was the lowest by £40m. You’ve got Southampton on £116m, £117m. Brentford, who pay the lowest wages of established Premier League clubs, were on £131m. That’s £54m more.
“If you split that between a squad of 25 players. The average player is on considerably more [at Brentford than Ipswich].
“Ipswich were paying on average, based on my calculations, £32,000 to £33,000 a week in wages in the Premier League. Brentford were paying £55,000.
Brentford build up their wage budget over a number of seasons (Image: PA)
“If you’ve got a choice of Brentford or Ipswich, which club to go to – no disrespect. Ipswich is a fantastic place to live, I’ve been there as an away fan, I love going to Ipswich, but that’s a big difference in terms of wages.
“That’s going to turn players’ heads. It’s a short career.
“If I compare Ipswich to the clubs that were relegated, I already mentioned Southampton, but Leicester were relegated with players on £65,000 a week. That’s the gulf.
“A lot of focus is on the player costs from a transfer-fee point of view because we live in that reflective glory – ‘my football team has just broken its transfer record, the first time we’ve spent £25m, £30m, £40m’, whatever it’s going to be.
“As fans, we do live in that reflection of the activities of our football club, in terms of our own self-esteem and self-awareness, self-worth and so on.
“For me, it’s a case of combining wages and transfer fees to get a broader analysis.”