Dan11

We've played Leicester, Leeds, West Brom twice. All of our next 9 are against bottom half teams (as it stands). Southampton still have to go away from home to all of the top 5. A lot is being made of 1 win in 9, but we've only lost twice in what has been a fairly tough run of games in which we've played Leicester twice, Leeds and West Brom. The QPR draw at home over Christmas (when we had half our starting line up out) could come back to haunt us. I think we will hit 90 points but that likely won't be enough in what is looking like being a freak season in terms of points needed for the top 2.

To be honest though, for clubs like us that don't have parachute payments, what is the alternative strategy? The key is obviously your scouting/recruitment being absolutely on point but inevitably not every player you sign is going to be an Adam Webster. I think it is actually easier in some ways to play this strategy out at the lower end of the market (<£2m) than it is when you suddenly have £5m to spend on a player. The risk is far higher and your margin for error is a lot lower. I know they've picked up now, but I look at some of the business Coventry did in the summer and I guarantee they've made a couple of mistakes. Haji Wright £8m prime example.

I think Leif Davis would inevitably go. He's a Premier League full back in style and quality and will command a big fee. How we got him in L1 I have no idea. The biggest worry of course would be a PL club wanting McKenna which is inevitable at some point. Financially we've really not invested that heavily at all. We built a squad in L1 under SCMP rules that could compete pretty well in the Championship. Highest fee we've paid under our new owners is £1.5m (Broadhead, Hirst, Taylor) - on 3/4 year contracts for FFP and players that have future resale value. I don't expect Moore is coming cheap in terms of loan fee/wages but that's a signing we had to make in our position. If he makes the kind of impact he did on Saturday then he will be worth every penny!

I'm sorry but that is drivel. We had as many errors playing out from the back in that game as we have all season. We are very good at it generally and we've scored far more goals than we've conceded by playing that way. It was one of those halves on Saturday. We were sloppy and nothing went for us. I know you guys don't like Ashton but I find the dislike for us a bit odd to be honest. Clubs that aren't in receipt of parachute payments should be united and happy to see another club defying the odds to compete! I certainly would be if the boot was on the other foot. We've really missed Hirst since Boxing Day (and Morsy has been suspended for 3 games too). Moore is in and up and running now though. After West Brom on Saturday, we have a run of 9 games where you are the best team we play. So that's where we need to make hay. We've already played Leeds and Leicester twice. I back us to go close to the top 2. But if we finish in the top 6 it is an amazing season for us regardless.

We play a lot of horizontal, slower football in the defensive third, looking to draw teams onto us and create openings. La Pausa I believe they call it! Once we find that opening though, it's fast and vertical through the middle and final thirds. At the end of the day, like you say, it is being well drilled, well coached, having strong relationships on the pitch and the end product of a team that has been progressively built and improved over the last 2 and a bit years. McKenna hasn't built this team and style overnight. In his early days we were tight defensively but struggled to score goals, which is mad to say now! This is why I think patience is needed with Manning, he needs time to mould the team into what he wants.

Twine is a player that I struggle to decipher if he's any good or not - as a top Championship player anyway. We've played against him 3 times (twice at MK and once for Hull) and other than the sharp intake of breath when he stepped up to take a free kick around the box, you've left the game not being able to pinpoint what he did. Manning did really seem to find a way of utilising him at MK and getting him shooting positions outside box, he scored some outrageous goals that season. L1/Championship have very different physical/intensity requirements though, which is where I would have question marks. I think Burnley had their pants pulled down at £4m.

He's suspended for Sunderland/Leicester - got his 10th booking in our last game. I suspect that comes into our thinking! We needed another combative midfielder for rotation with Luongo too as we look so much better with two of those types than just the one, and it isn't really Taylor's game. Suspect he will now move into the 10 rotation. I wouldn't describe either as particularly expensive or marquee!

So like everyone else in the league, we have to play virtually all of the teams in the league again? (bar Leeds and QPR).

Yeah, you can be sure with McKenna we won’t be signing players for the sake of it. And our owners are equally sensible. We will be having a go as far as we can do given our current position.

We will be spending more than £3m this January, I’m certain of that. Talk down here is that Stansfield is being recalled from Birmingham and coming here (not sure if loan or permanent). Suspect there will be 2/3 more as well. Diallo would obviously be excellent if he’s fit and is well known to McKenna and the coaching team.

I suspect the leak about him saying he’s not going to AFCON is a bit of a PR stunt for us fans. He’s only got 9 caps and only been in one squad in the two and a bit years he’s been here so doubt he’d have made the final cut anyway. Either way I doubt Egypt will lose sleep or kick off about him not being in the squad! Hirst will be a big loss. We are fortunate this didn’t happen a month or two ago or we’d have been in bother. January is going to be our biggest transfer window in as long as I can remember!

I can't even begin to tell you how majorly underinvested in the entire club was towards the end under Evans - everything cut back to the absolute bare bones. For a couple of years, the bar at Portman Road was the only place I frequented where you couldn't pay by card

Davis was around £1.25m + add ons. An absolute steal. Although Broadhead and Hirst at £1.5m + add ons each don't look bad either!

Yes, that doubling of losses was reflective of the fact Marcus Evans ran the entire club on skeleton staff and had invested in nothing for years! Spending on every aspect of the club increased (and in 22/23) - players wages, staff wages, women's team, infrastructure etc. Some of that is going to be capital expenditure, some of it allowable for FFP and some of it not. We spent very little in the summer really. We've also obviously got increased income this year from TV etc too. I suspect we are going to spend a decent chunk of change on another striker this January and there will probably be another couple of ins and outs. There's already interest in Davis around the £15m mark so we've got that as a safety valve this summer. We'd be really daft not to have a push this window when we will sit somewhere between 7-13 points clear of 3rd come January 1st. We will never be in a better position going into a mid season transfer window.

"However the Football League use a is broader definition of Turnover. Crucially, the FL Turnover figure includes donations from the owners to the club and injections of equity. Loans from club owners are understandably not included in the Turnover figure as these would result in growing club debts. up club debts." All of the money put into ITFC is equity funding rather than debt. We built a side we thought could compete in the Championship whilst we were still in L1. It's impossible not to comply with SCMP as it is far more interactive/monitored in real time than FFP in the Championship. I don't know where this idea we are spending well beyond our means comes from. We have plenty of headroom and if we don't go up this season Leif Davis will go for huge money in the summer.

I think it goes without saying that any team that can't keep their best players fit isn't going to be as successful. There might be a small element of luck but most of it is down to staff, facilities and analysis of data around red zones etc - it's definitely not finger in the air and hope players stay fit. We couldn't keep Adam Webster fit for a prolonged run of games at Ipswich. I can't remember if Ashton said this when he was with you or it's something he's said since he was here, but he knew we under invested in our medical team/facilities and backed Bristol City to be able to keep him fit. You did and then sold him for 7/8 times what you paid us!

We are fortunate we've not had any bone injuries (breaks etc) that are somewhat outside of our control but there is no luck about us being able to avoid muscle injuries. Since Rolls and his team came across from you guys they've been exceptional. We also recruited Ivan Mukandi (ex Arsenal, head of strength and conditioning) and Matt Allen (ex Spurs, head of athletic performance). We've invested properly in this area and gone from a club that could never keep players fit to one where we rarely get injuries. There's no coincidence there. We seem to be able to manage players before they get an injury - Broadhead is the most obvious example, his minutes are very closely managed.

On what basis do you believe we have breached FFP?

Depends how you want to frame it. The flip side is he went into MK with no pre-season with none of his own players and he put his stamp on it and got them playing dominant, winning football straight away. Will never know how Martin would have done but suspect his team would have been all fart and no poo as his sides always are. Do get why you might have reservations about the season that followed. Not sure how much involvement he had in the recruitment. I do think clubs like MK and Oxford are up against it though. They suffer from often doing a lot right in terms of recruitment and the reward for that is being pillaged if you don't make the most of having a decent team together for one season. Only so many times you can be spot on with your recruitment and picking up the right loans. Plymouth would have been victims of that had they not got promoted last season as well.

I understand that - obviously you know far more about the dynamics when he was with you. I think it helps us that McKenna is so precise about what/who he wants. He's said himself his list of targets is tiny and he'd rather have nobody than someone that isn't the right fit. I think Manning will be the same for you, he will know exactly what he is looking for.

You have to look at his decision to leave in the context of his past experience at MK as well. He had a couple of opportunities to leave when he was flying there and he stuck around for the family silver to be sold a few months later and the recruitment team to struggle to replicate their loan success from the previous summer. 6 months is a long time in football and you have to cash in whilst your stock is high!

That is what Davis does for us - incredible athlete who covers the whole left side allowing Broadhead to tuck inside. Leigh was obviously with us last season and was the back up in that position. We've now got Clarke/Williams who are similar athletes on the right side so it is a more conventional 4-2-3-1 but during the first half of last season we played with Donacien as a hybrid RB/CB so our defenders would all roll over one position when Davis bombed on with us moving into a 3-4-3. 'Knowing your players', what they are capable of and their strengths and weaknesses is obviously the key. Because I am a bit sad, I listened to a bit of Manning's press conference and heard him use the term 'coachable players' several times - he will want players he can improve and that are tactically intelligent. As we've learned, it also helps with squad building as you can more easily recruit to one style if your players can be adaptable and play more than one position/role.

As a unit, our patterns of play are complexed, intricate and finely tuned but McKenna makes it very simple for the players and concentrates on what they can do, rather than what they can't do. Every player knows their role and knows where they need to be if the ball is in 'position X' or position Y'. If Davis has that ball in behind, wide left you can bet Hirst/Broadhead are sucking the defenders into the box with Chaplin holding his position waiting for the pull back. I think you might be surprised what Manning can get out of some of the players. I am sure you have your Morsy/Burgess equivalents that can be transformed into totally different beasts.

It will be very similar - they share the same 'principles' (even got me saying it now!) and values on how football should be played. We played out a 0-0 draw with his MK team that from a coaching perspective must have been the highest level game played in L1 for a long time. McKenna tweaked it, Manning tweaked it ad infinitum and we just cancelled each other out. You could have listened to both post match interviews and not known which one was talking.

I guarantee that you won't have a clue what formation you are playing. It will transition between 3-4-3, 3-5-2 and 4-2-3-1 within games let alone from game to game. Get used to hearing the word 'principles'.