AFTER a flurry of activity in the summer transfer window, Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna is looking forward to working with a settled squad for the rest of the year as he prepares to take on Brighton and Hove Albion this weekend.

By the time the window shut at the start of September, newly promoted Ipswich Town had recruited an entire new team of senior players, with nine signings, two loanees, plus four academy additions.

This compares to the seven outfield players brought in during the equivalent window last summer.

Their net spend of over £132 million was a record for the club and puts them ahead of every other team in the Premier League, except today’s opponents Brighton (£151.5m).

It is new territory for McKenna, who has worked with a settled core of players to earn successive promotions from League One and the Championship.

Now after a summer of revolving doors at Portman Road which has seen just as many players leave the club, McKenna is relieved he can concentrate on working with his players.

“I do feel more relaxed after the window has shut, for sure. It was such a busy period for us as a football club. I was able to look in the eyes of our squad and know that this is the group that we’re working with until at least January.”

McKenna went into detail about the extra work and challenges created by welcoming new signings into a club the size of Ipswich Town.

“Integrating new players on a practical level, yeah, it’s a challenge,” he said.

“Housing, to start with, there’s not that many houses on the market in Suffolk. So you’ve lots of practical things like that, helping families settle in, nurseries and schools.

“From an infrastructure perspective, that work is spread between not as many people here as it would be at Manchester United, so that means everyone is having to work really, really hard.

“Of course, we want to get players up to speed from a tactical point of view. So that means lots more individual sit-downs. I am going from this press conference to one, with one of the new players to go through extra video clips of how we can integrate them into the team, what role we see them in, what are the details we will look from them, in and out possession — a lot more work like that. It’s going to be a process over time.

“The things that are positive here is that we’ve got a fantastic group of players who help with that integration.

“We’ve got over 50 per cent of the squad who were with us in the Championship, maybe close to 50 per cent who were with us in League One.

“So they’ve been with us a good amount of time, they know the ins and outs of how we work, what we do well. And they’re really helping with the new players, with integrating them.

“The characters that we’ve brought in the building is a big help. Bringing in people who I think will fit in and add to the culture — who are hungry to be here — was at the top of my checklist this transfer window, as it has been in every transfer window.”

After three successive defeats at the start of the season, Ipswich arrested that run with an encouraging home draw against Fulham at the end of August.

Left with just 10 fit players to work with during the international break, McKenna has seen them all return this week.

That includes record signing Omari Hutchinson, who pulled out of the recent England’s U21 game on medical grounds but has resumed full training.

With Wes Burns and George Hirst also in contention to play against Brighton after injury, there is optimism around the club going into a set of more favourable fixtures than their opening games against Liverpool and Manchester City.

However, McKenna is preaching patience.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” he said.

“The last game we had maybe, three or four Premier League debuts. Across the squad so far, we’ve maybe had 14, 15 full Premier League debuts.

“So we’re in a process, and as I’ve said I think we’re going to get better, week by week, if we take the right approach.

“It’s good that we’ve been already pretty competitive in our games, and we’ll try and be this weekend. If we stay on the right path and stick together, I think in the course of weeks and months we'll be in a much better place than we are even now.”