Major Ipswich Town transfer overhaul could not save Paul Cook: View | OneFootball

Paul Cook failed to deliver at Ipswich Town despite being strongly backed in the transfer market in the summer of 2021.

Ipswich Town are back in the Premier League for the first time in 22 years after winning promotion from the Championship last season.

It was an incredible campaign for the Tractor Boys last season as they finished as runners-up in the second tier behind Leicester City, completing back-to-back promotions.

Manager Kieran McKenna has transformed Ipswich since taking over at Portman Road in December 2021, and the club is unrecognisable from the one that was languishing in mid-table in League One when he arrived.

The Tractor Boys had endured years of underachievement under a host of managers before McKenna, including the likes of Roy Keane, Paul Jewell, Mick McCarthy, Paul Hurst and Paul Lambert, but Paul Cook's tenure was arguably the most disappointing for supporters.

While those who occupied the Ipswich hot seat during the ownership of Marcus Evans had to work with a limited budget, Cook's appointment in March 2021 coincided with the takeover by Gamechanger 2020 Ltd, and big things were expected of him after he was heavily backed in the summer transfer window.

Ipswich Town's summer spending under Paul Cook

Ipswich had failed to reach the play-offs in their first two seasons in League One, but Cook had won three promotions in his career prior to his arrival at Portman Road, and many believed he was the man to lead the club back to the Championship.

That was clearly a view shared by the Tractor Boys' new owners as Cook was given strong support in the transfer market, with 19 new signings joining the club over the course of the summer window.

The huge influx of new additions included a number of players who dropped down from the Championship to make the move to Suffolk, and unsurprisingly, Ipswich were widely considered to be one of the promotion favourites.

However, the summer business put significant pressure on Cook to deliver, and it became apparent early in the season that his side were going to struggle to live up to expectations.

Paul Cook's Ipswich Town tenure will go down as a failure

Of course, the much-changed Ipswich team was always going to need time to gel, but the warning signs were there from the opening day of the 2021-22 season when the Tractor Boys needed a last-minute equaliser to salvage a point in a 2-2 draw at home to newly-promoted Morecambe.

The poor start to the season continued over the coming weeks, with Cook's men drawing with MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon and suffering a 5-2 defeat to Bolton Wanderers on their own patch, while they were also beaten at Burton Albion and Cheltenham Town.

Ipswich finally secured their first win of the campaign at the seventh attempt with a 1-0 victory at Lincoln City in mid-September, and while results did improve after that, inconsistency remained a problem, preventing progress up the table.

Patience with Cook was wearing increasingly thin, and the 57-year-old was sacked in early December, just hours after his side were held to a 0-0 home draw by League Two side Barrow in the FA Cup second round, departing with the club sitting 11th in League One.

Speaking a month after his dismissal, Cook claimed that he would have left the club in the summer if he knew there was going to be a demand for instant success, and he insisted that he should have been given more time.

"100% we should have been given longer, 100%," Cook said on Sky Sports News, quoted by the East Anglian Daily Times.

"I get stats in the modern game but I think it’s grossly unfair that you can put the manager’s stats on the table when, in the summer, we released 27-30 players and brought in 19 new ones. We’re probably talking about two different teams there.

"We initially at Ipswich went six games without winning, so that would have brought a pressure.

"For anyone to tell a manager that 20 league games is enough, in my world, is wrong," Cook added.

Cook may have had a point that he did deserve more time considering the huge turnover of players in the summer, but in truth, there was little to suggest that the Tractor Boys were going to seriously challenge for promotion under his guidance.

Given the remarkable success that has followed under McKenna, few will likely share Cook's view that he should have been given longer, but at the time of his exit, there was huge disappointment that what had promised to be an exciting new era turned out to be so underwhelming.

Cook's time at Portman Road will be regarded as a failure, but Ipswich supporters should still be thankful to him as a number of his signings have played a crucial role in the club's recent promotions, including the likes of Christian Walton, Vaclav Hladky, George Edmundson, Cameron Burgess, Sam Morsy and Conor Chaplin.