Kieran McKenna makes Ipswich Town, Luke Wolfenden transfer plea after Coventry City move | OneFootball

The Sky Blues have had an offer rejected for the Ipswich defender.

Kieran McKenna has made Ipswich Town's transfer stance on Luke Woolfenden, after he was linked with Coventry City and Stoke City, clear: they want him to stay.

When it was revealed by Ben Jacobs that the Tractor Boys had rejected an offer from Frank Lampard's side for Woolfenden, the journalist stated that Ipswich were not interested in letting the player leave this summer.

While he is yet to be used by McKenna this summer, the Ipswich academy graduate played a major role in getting the club promoted two seasons ago and is the obvious back-up to either the captain, Dara O'Shea, or Jacob Greaves, if they were to get injured.

Kieran McKenna lays out Ipswich Town's transfer stance on Luke Woolfenden

Local outlet TWTD have said that both Stoke and, more recently, Watford are also interested in the 26-year-old. The interest in the defender hasn't bothered his boss, who has insisted that the club want to hold onto the defender.

"It’s clear that Luke is someone we’d like to keep," said McKenna, via the East Anglian Daily Times. "[He's] an important player for the club and the team, a lot of experience with the group and has worked with us for a long time, and is a very good player.

"He’s someone that we’d like to keep, but the situations are never always simple. There’s different parties involved and different wishes, and it’s been a challenging summer in that respect, there’s no doubt about it.

"Probably the most challenging ones are the players who have been with us the longest, because they’re players we have a great affinity for and the supporters have a great affinity for – they’ve been part of something really special here.

"But also we’ve had different situations this summer – Cameron Burgess, Nathan Broadhead, Samy Morsy – players who have had incredible offers, life-changing offers from a financial point of view that they’ve deserved off what they’ve done in the last few years here.

"In those situations it’s always really difficult. We want to keep a strong group together, we’d like to keep quite a few of the players who have been with us on the journey for the last few years to stay here and be part of it.

"You also want to respect their wishes and have a group come the end of August who really want to be here, with the right motivation and the right reasons to try and help the team and their own career.

"These situations are always more complicated than just what we want or what the player wants – and we’ll try to find the best solution.

"And hopefully by the end of August we have a really strong and motivated squad."

Ipswich shouldn't consider offloading Luke Woolfenden at this stage of the transfer window

Losing Woolfenden now would be extremely costly for Town. It has been a difficult summer for them with regard to incomings. They've often not landed their number one targets in each position, and, as a result, their squad maybe doesn't look as frightening as it did when it came down to the second tier at the start of this summer.

There are just 10 days left in the transfer window. While that may give the likes of Coventry, Stoke and Watford greater impetus to get a move for Woolfenden done, it should give his current club extra motivation to hold onto the defender.

The club have been linked with Club American centre-half Sebastian Caceres by Fabrizio Romano. Needing to complete a move like this to replace Woolfenden, who still has a couple of years left on his deal, would unnecessarily add to the already piling amount of work that Town's recruitment team need to do before 7pm on 1st September.