Ipswich Town are moving quickly this summer, but not quite as quickly as the noise around them would suggest. The club have already added 12 players and, after yesterday’s near £50m double deal for Julio Enciso and Abdoul Ouattara, the scale of their rebuilding is obvious. What is equally obvious, though, is that there has been no fresh move for Exequiel Palacios since Bayer Leverkusen knocked back the initial €15m offer.
That matters because this is not a club shopping for decoration. Ipswich are trying to strengthen two priority positions before the window closes at 11pm on Tuesday, September 1, while also keeping one eye on the Premier League’s 25-man senior squad limit. In other words, every addition has to count, and every new name has to make sense inside a squad that may still need departures as well as arrivals.
Fabrizio Romano had suggested Ipswich were optimistic of closing a deal for Palacios after a “new official bid” to Bayer Leverkusen. But as things stand, there has still been no follow-up offer since the first €15m was rejected. That is the real story here: not the rumour, not the optimism, but the fact that Ipswich have yet to push the deal on to the next stage.
No fresh move, no recent contact
The same caution applies to Breel Embolo. L’Équipe reported last night that the powerful and experienced Swiss international had rejected a lucrative contract at MLS side Atlanta United after a €17m bid to Rennes had been accepted. Yet there has been no recent contact from Ipswich with Rennes or with Embolo himself in the last few days. So while the links exist, the hard evidence of momentum does not.
That does not make Ipswich’s business underwhelming. Twelve signings is a serious statement, and the arrival of Enciso and Ouattara shows the club are willing to spend at scale as they prepare for life back in the Premier League. Mark Ashton has already made clear that the American owners have urged him to go right to the limit of financial fair play, and the club are certainly behaving like a side that intends to make the most of that backing. But spending power and transfer certainty are not the same thing.
There is still a long way to go before Saturday’s 3pm season opener at home to Sunderland, and Ipswich are entitled to feel they have given themselves a much stronger base than the one they started with. Still, the final stretch of the window will be judged on whether they turn serious interest into completed deals. Right now, on Palacios at least, the pause is more telling than the promise.
And that is where the pressure sits. Ipswich have done plenty already, but they have not done enough to suggest the work is finished. The window is ticking, the squad limit is real, and the next move has to be more than a headline.
