Ipswich Town questioned for "confusing" Luke Woolfenden, Coventry City situation | OneFootball

Ipswich Town have sold Luke Woolfenden to Coventry City for £4 million, and FLW's Ipswich fan pundit doesn't understand the logic of the sale.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Despite starting the season among the favourites to win promotion to the Premier League, Ipswich Town have had an underwhelming start to their return to the Championship.

Ipswich have started their season with three draws and a defeat from their opening four matches, and transfer deadline day was an opportunity to strengthen their squad ahead of the coming months. But instead, the biggest deal that the Tractor Boys were involved in turned out to be the sale of defender Luke Woolfenden to Coventry City for £4 million.

Both Ipswich and Coventry are expected to be among those jostling for a promotion position, come the end of this season, so we spoke to our resident Ipswich fan pundit Adam Wilkin about this sale, and about whether it was wise to sell the defender to another Championship club at this price.

"I don't understand this window" - Ipswich criticised over sale of Luke Woolfenden to Coventry

Football League World's resident Ipswich Town fan pundit Adam Wilkin, did not think Ipswich's defence would look like this by the start of this season: "At the start of the summer, I thought it was almost certain that Dara O'Shea would be sold and that Luke Woolfenden would be our starting right centre half alongside Jacob Greaves. I think when he played in the Premier League he showed that he was more than capable of playing at that level, and he was excellent in the Championship alongside Burgess."

Adam believes that Coventry have got an excellent deal in picking up Woolfenden at that price: "I understand that he wants to leave to play football, but if at the start of the season you offered me £4m for Luke Woolfenden and keeping Dara O'Shea or £25m and keeping Luke Woolfenden I'd have taken the £25m and kept Woolfenden. £4m is an absolute snip of a deal if that is the correct fee quoted, for someone who is homegrown, who is an Ipswich boy through and through, and is our only defender who's comfortable on the ball and playing the ball forward. Greaves and O'Shea have developed that in the last couple of games, but they still don't fill me with confidence."

And Adam is concerned that Ipswich have not only left themselves potentially defensively short with this sale, but also strengthened a potential promotion rival in the process: "The end of this window is so confusing. I get that he wants to leave because he's not got the game time that he thought he was going to get, but with him leaving you're looking at probably looking at Elkan Baggott as your fourth choice, who hasn't had any Championship experience at all, I think it just weakens the squad, strengthens a rival, and it's about half the value that he's worth. Woolfenden is clearly worth at least £8m in this market, I think. I don't understand this window; at least the last day of this window, anyway."

Luke Woolfenden's departure to a rival is a gamble for Ipswich Town

With over 200 appearances for Ipswich Town over eight seasons, Luke Woolfenden certainly was "an Ipswich boy through and through." He played for the club across three divisions, including both of their consecutive promotion campaigns and their year in the Premier League.

But Woolfenden only made 15 Premier League appearances for them last season, and at 26 years of age was clearly not happy to spend more time on the bench. Whether the player was worth more than £4 million is a completely subjective question, but the impression certainly seems to have been left that the club have let go of an accomplished defender too easily.

Without a win from their first four matches of the season, Ipswich are already playing catch-up with the teams above them in the table. Ipswich fans will be keeping everything crossed that the club have got this gamble right.