Top News

Premier League clubs are moving rapidly in the summer transfer window. Their combined spending is already thought to be around £1.5 billion, and the stream of transfer developments is arriving faster than ever.

Established Premier League sides are never reluctant to spend. The risks they take are softened by the fees they receive when selling costly players to one another, and by the assurance that comes from being firmly established in this market over many years.

For promoted clubs, however, the picture is different, and this summer is proving no exception. Coventry City, Ipswich Town and Hull City are all at different points in their Premier League journeys and each faces its own specific recruitment issues in this window. Their main objective, though, is shared. They need to stay up.

Last season’s Championship winners are, in practical terms, new arrivals to the Premier League. When they went down 25 years ago, the top flight was nowhere near the financial giant it has since become.

Coventry earned promotion with a squad that was far too strong for the Championship under manager Frank Lampard, but not one fully equipped to survive in the Premier League. Like many promoted teams before them, the Sky Blues are now going through a major recruitment examination.

Coventry have made midfielder Frank Onyeka’s loan move permanent and are close to doing the same with goalkeeper Carl Rushworth. Following the arrival of defender Aurele Amenda from Eintracht Frankfurt and former Burnley winger Loum Tchaouna, Rushworth is set to become Coventry’s record signing.

Coventry will not be able to strengthen every area this summer. With the goalkeeping position effectively settled and Tchaouna added to an already solid attacking midfield group, left-sided defenders and a striker now appear to be the priority positions.

Ipswich are back in the Premier League after being promoted, promoted, relegated and then promoted again across the last five seasons.

Former manager Kieran McKenna said at the start of last season that the club were not where he wanted them to be. They eventually got things right, but his successor in the dugout, Gary O’Neil, would benefit from getting off to a quicker start this time.

The Tractor Boys have paid fees for eight new signings so far this summer, with the biggest outlays going on Brazilian striker Emersonn from Toulouse and highly rated young Leicester City winger Abdul Fatawu.

Issa Diop, Chuba Akpom and Daizen Maeda look like smart additions with top-level experience, while the signing of Kjell Scherpen from Union Saint-Gilloise could open the door for goalkeeper Alex Palmer to head back to West Bromwich Albion.

Ipswich are expected to let a few more players leave this summer, and that could leave O’Neil tempted to add an experienced central midfielder if the opportunity presents itself.

The play-off winners sit somewhere between the other promoted clubs in terms of profile. They were relegated from the top flight 10 seasons ago; the leftover financial gains from Premier League football have long since disappeared, but the club still carries that imprint.

Winning promotion almost by accident does not always lead to Premier League failure, but it is fairly obvious that the Tigers have a major job on their hands in the transfer market this summer.

Among their four confirmed new signings, only 22-year-old Ecuador midfielder Oscar Zambrano is under 30, but Jack Butland from Rangers and Matt Targett from Newcastle United could both turn out to be the sort of signings other clubs wish they had gambled on.

Rayo Vallecano’s Senegal defender Nobel Mendy is reportedly the next player expected through the door, for the highest fee of all. Alongside Butland, Zambrano and Hidemasa Morita, the planned centre-back addition suggests Hull are concentrating on giving manager Sergej Jakirovic a strong spine through the team.

That kind of clarity is vital not only for Hull, but for Coventry and Ipswich as well. All three clubs have holes and vulnerabilities, alongside the obvious strengths that helped take them to this level in the first place.

They will not be able to fix every weakness. For promoted teams, the transfer window is about getting maximum value for money and giving themselves the best possible chance of surviving and then thriving in the top division.