DON DEAL: Despite his goal-scoring prowess, Ipswich Town should avoid signing the £19 million striker.

The Tractor Boys now have an even more difficult task ahead of them: maintaining their Premier League status. Last season, Suffolk Town accomplished something quite amazing by being promoted to the top division. That will most likely need some cunning work this summer in the transfer market, and rumors have it that they’ve already found their first target in the form of the prolific Fotis Ioannidis of Panathinaikos.

The 24-year-old international striker for Ipswich, who scored 23 goals in 44 games for his club last season and tallied twice for the national team, including a goal against France, is apparently the target of a bid of €22.5 million (£19 million) that the Greek team rejected. Although a stronger offer is probably on the way, Ipswich may have some fierce competition from West Ham United and Sporting, the Portuguese champions, who are reportedly considering making a bid. Sporting was even recently mentioned by the Portuguese newspaper O Jogo as Ioannidis’ personal top choice. Stated differently, Ipswich might lose out on their man.

Over the previous year, Ioannidis has not been missing all that much. Prior to the current campaign, the striker’s greatest result was seven goals in 42 appearances. However, something clicked for the player this year, and he started hitting goals that he may not have even considered previously. He was never particularly prolific before the 2023–24 season. Along with showing significant improvement in his first touch, mobility, and passing, he also picked up seven assists, most of which came from dropping deep to gain ball and slide in other attackers to score.

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His off-ball abilities are evident, and he is content to locate openings all around the area in front of the penalty box, from one wing to the other, to offer a passing option. However, he is now fully utilizing those positions to both create and score goals, something he wasn’t doing previously. Although he isn’t a superb technician, he is beating opponents much more frequently and creating significantly more opportunities for himself than he did in the past.

Thus, there is a great deal of interest in hiring him. Although Panathinaikos has a contract with him through 2027 and is obviously not in a hurry to sell, Premier League teams will probably have the financial wherewithal to coerce them at some point. While Nathan Broadhead, Ipswich’s leading scorer with 13 goals in the Championship last season, and players like Conor Chaplin will need to be supplemented with goals, there’s a potential that losing out on Ioannidis won’t be as devastating.

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To begin with, nine of his twenty-three goals came from penalty kicks. Despite being a skilled penalty taker, there isn’t much evidence to support his ability to score goals from open play. In the last two years in the Greek Superleague, he has only scored 15 goals. It is natural to wonder if he would be the 10-15 goal striker a newly-promoted team frequently needs to survive, given that there is undoubtedly a gap between that level and the Premier League.

It doesn’t help that despite their direct running and quick-paced attacking style, Ipswich isn’t a club that wins a lot of penalties; in fact, they only won three during the entire season, which helped them advance. ChampionsIn contrast, Leicester City was awarded 13.

And one wonders if the top authorities would still discover Ioannidis’ method. He is becoming better in that area, but he still only defeats his man about a third of the time on the ground, and he still has a tendency to play a little loose with his first touch, which elite defenders would probably take advantage of.

He might show that he can move it up a notch, but spending so much money on a guy with so many questions about his game would be risky for a team that needs to make their transfers work in order to survive a season in this very tough league. Although he possesses many positive traits, an outstanding work ethic, and the strength and passing ability to be a valuable link-up man, it remains to be seen if he can be the player who scores the goals that keep a team in the lead.

Maybe Ipswich will find out next season, and maybe Ioannidis’ growing confidence in front of goal will allow him to develop into an even more potent striker in the future years. Ioannidis is not a given, therefore Kieran McKenna might be content to miss out on this trade. However, Ipswich might later regret not investing the necessary funds to bring him to Portman Road.

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