Coventry City will have looked at Ipswich Town with envy over £750k signing | OneFootball

Coventry City will be jealous that they did not get what Ipswich Town have from forward Conor Chaplin.

As Ipswich Town prepare to return to the Championship, they will be hoping that some of their star players can rediscover the form they showed during their previous spell in the division.

After winning back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League, Ipswich returned to the top flight for the first time in 22 years last season, but the step-up in quality proved to be a little too much for them.

Having spent almost the entire season in the bottom three, the Tractor Boys were relegated with four games still to play, and they eventually finished second-bottom of the table with just 22 points to their name.

However, Ipswich still have many of the squad from their previous promotion Championship campaign on their books, so they are widely expected to challenge for an immediate return to the Premier League next season, and forward Conor Chaplin is one of those who will likely be a key part of manager Kieran McKenna's plans.

Ipswich Town struck gold with Conor Chaplin, Barnsley deal

Chaplin joined Ipswich from Barnsley in July 2021 for a fee in the region of £750,000, and he was one of 19 signings made as part of Paul Cook's big summer rebuild.

Given that Chaplin helped the Tykes reach the Championship play-offs the previous season, it was seen as a big coup for the Tractor Boys to land his signature, and after a mixed first year at Portman Road, he showed exactly why the Suffolk outfit were willing to splash the cash on him.

Chaplin scored an incredible 29 goals and provided five assists in 52 appearances to help Ipswich to automatic promotion from League One in the 2022-23 season as his side accumulated a total of 98 points, and the 28-year-old finished as the joint-top scorer in the division.

There were some question marks over whether Chaplin would be able to deliver in the Championship, but the forward adapted seamlessly to life in the second tier, netting 13 goals and registering nine assists in 47 games as McKenna's men completed the remarkable feat of consecutive promotions, and five of those goals were decisive winners that earned his team a crucial 15 points.

Chaplin found the jump to the Premier League a little tougher, and he scored just one goal and provided one assist in 22 league appearances last season, with only 10 of those coming from the start, but he did miss over three months of the campaign with a knee injury.

After his role in Ipswich's back-to-back promotions, Chaplin's Portman Road legacy is secure, but his former club Coventry City may be looking on with jealousy at what he has been able to achieve during his time in East Anglia.

Coventry City did not get what Ipswich Town have from Conor Chaplin

Mark Robins developed many players during his seven-and-a-half-year spell in charge of Coventry, but Chaplin was one he struggled to get the best out of.

Having scored 25 goals and provided seven assists in 122 games for Portsmouth after coming through the academy at Fratton Park, Chaplin left his boyhood club to join the Sky Blues on loan in the summer of 2018 following their promotion to League One, with an agreement in place to make the deal permanent in the January transfer window.

The 2018-19 season proved to be a frustrating one for Coventry as they finished eighth in League One, missing out on the play-offs by eight points, and like the rest of his team-mates, Chaplin struggled to perform consistently, scoring just eight goals and registering three assists in 32 appearances.

There were some memorable moments during Chaplin's time at the CBS Arena, with his most notable contribution coming when he scored the winner in a dramatic 5-4 victory at Sunderland, but he did not hit the heights Robins would have expected of him, and he frequently found himself out of the starting line-up towards the end of the season.

Despite Chaplin's inconsistent form for the Sky Blues, he still did enough to convince Barnsley to offer him the opportunity to play in the Championship in the summer of 2019, and he went on to spend the next two years at Oakwell before making the move to Ipswich.