Ipswich Town: Marcus Stewart can be a huge inspiration - View | OneFootball

Kieran McKenna and Ipswich Town have done what many would have called 'impossible' at the start of the season and have achieved promotion to the Premier League.

However, having now achieved this amazing feat, there may be questions about how the squad is prepared for the Tractor Boys' first experience of Premier League football since 2002.

Multiple goals from the likes of Omari Hutchinson and Kieffer Moore, along with top scorers Conor Chaplin and Nathan Broadhead, who both netted 13 league goals this season, helped fire the side from Suffolk to promotion, but with Hutchinson and Moore only being at Portman Road on a temporary basis, there may need to be some thought about where to look for goals ahead of next season.

To serve as inspiration for this thought, the name of Marcus Stewart could be brought up. The English striker was a great goalscorer for Ipswich in the early noughties and certainly helped create memories that surely still live on in the minds of many older Ipswich fans.

Stewart's impressive goalscoring was key to Ipswich's success

Stewart only had a short stint at Portman Road, but he would leave a lasting impact.

Signed from divisional rivals Huddersfield Town just before the end of the 1999/00 season, Stewart's first three goals for the club all helped pave the way for their Premier League promotion. He netted twice in Ipswich's play-off semi-final victory over Bolton Wanderers, and then once in the play-off final itself, as Ipswich triumphed over Barnsley.

The following season, however, is when Stewart's goals caused a big impact, created unbelievable memories for fans and formed history for the Tractor Boys.

In the 2000/01 season, Stewart would fire in 19 goals in the Premier League, only four short of top scorer Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, making him the highest English goalscorer for the year. However, more spectacularly, these goals helped fire Ipswich to a fifth place finish in the league.

On their way to this fantastic league placing, they would record famous victories over the likes of Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur, as well as draws against Manchester United and Arsenal.

Finishing there meant that Ipswich qualified for the UEFA Cup, a competition they last competed in during the 1980s and won in 1981.

They would beat Torpedo Moscow and Helsingborg IF in the first two rounds, before experiencing defeat on aggregate to Inter Milan, despite famously winning the home leg of the tie 1-0.

While European joy in 2001/02 was short-lived for Ipswich, there wasn't much happiness to be found in the league either. The side would find themselves relegated from the Premier League, but with Stewart's six goals, they went down fighting and the striker far from disgraced his legacy.

How does Marcus Stewart's legacy serve as inspiration

So how does Marcus Stewart's signing and his time at the club serve as inspiration for now? To answer this, we should look at the signing of Ali Al-Hamadi.

The signings of both Stewart and Al-Hamadi are eerily similar. Both were recruited mid-season, albeit Stewart a lot later, both were signed for fairly small transfer fees with potential add-ons, meaning they were seen as investments with an eye for the future, be it short or long term, and the pair only scored a handful of goals in their first seasons at the club.

As discussed above, Stewart signed from Huddersfield Town during the run-in of the 99/00 season, with Ipswich paying £2.5m at the time. At the time of signing, he had scored 14 times for Huddersfield and had them fighting for promotion, but was sold to Ipswich for a large fee, and ultimately helped the side from Suffolk to promotion with minimal goals that had maximum importance.

Al-Hamadi joined during this season's January transfer window, with the Tractor Boys paying around £1m for the Iraqi's services. He had scored 13 times across 23 appearances for AFC Wimbledon in League Two, and was signed to help supply Ipswich with goals during a period where they were struggling with attacking injuries.

Despite scoring only four times, each of his goals came in huge wins that helped Ipswich stay in the fight for promotion.

With spending likely to be spread across the squad and not focused on one area particularly, any budget assigned to help with attacking options could be quite thin. The Iraqi is not the only option that McKenna has up top, with the aforementioned Chaplin and Broadhead, along with George Hirst, providing the more likely options for firepower.

Should Chaplin, Broadhead, Hirst or indeed any other option that is brought in over the summer, become unavailable though, McKenna may well be forced to place his trust in Al-Hamadi when needed. It's perhaps ambitious to think he can be a regular source of goals in the top-flight, but it's an option that Ipswich do have.

External signings could repeat Stewart’s success

Al-Hamadi, or indeed any current Ipswich attacker, may not be the only players able to ‘do a Stewart’ next year for Ipswich, as external recruitment over the summer, no matter how large the outlay, could prove successful next year in whatever fight Ipswich find themselves in.

The Tractor Boys are currently linked to Arsenal’s Eddie Nketiah, as reported by The Standard, who is arguably in need of another breakthrough, and next season McKenna and Ipswich could help provide that.

At Arsenal, Nketiah has showed, at times, signs that he could grow to become a top Premier League striker. Across seven years and 168 appearances, the recently capped England international has scored 38 goals.

Nketiah hasn’t quite been able to become an important part of Mikel Arteta’s team, falling down the pecking order with the arrival of Kai Havertz last year, and that could mean a move is imminent.

He is still more than capable of playing regularly for a side in the top flight, however, and may be a player that could repeat, or better, Stewart’s goal tally for Ipswich in the top flight should McKenna opt to sign him. After all, the landscape has changed in the 20+ years Ipswich have been outside the top-flight and, whilst it's not alien that a striker steps out of the EFL to score goals in the Premier League, external recruitment is often key and might open the door to Ipswich finding that next Marcus Stewart.