The genius £11m Ipswich Town transfer that could provide goals needed for Premier League survival

Ipswich Town have just completed what could easily end up being the most impactful deal of their summer. After drawn-out negotiations and seemingly endless haggling, the club finally agreed a fee for Blackburn Rovers’ talismanic attacker Sammie Szmodics on Thursday and the signing was announced on Friday afternoon – and as a result, I may be forced to hate Ipswich forever.

Normally, my job with these articles is to expand upon transfer stories, to analyse how players might fit in at their new club and to see what strengths and weaknesses they bring to the table. But as a Blackburn fan, this is one occasion on which I’ll really just be telling Ipswich fans how bloody lucky they are. This one hurts, and the stats on my screen seem oddly blurry for some reason. I’m not sure why anybody would be slicing onions at this time of the day.

About a year ago, the Ireland international was little more than a hard-working attacking midfielder who was aggressive and technically solid but perhaps a little patchy, and whose form had waxed and waned a little over the course of his first season at Ewood Park. Then something remarkable happened – he emerged like an angry, heavily-tattooed butterfly from a chrysalis that nobody realised had even formed around him, and became one of the most important players in the club’s recent history.

Transmogrified from a flexible number ten or occasional winger into a false nine, Szmodics’ game suddenly stepped up a gear or three – and he started scoring goals. Lots of goals, an endless stream of goals, often very important and brilliantly taken goals. Something had clicked for him, and he was finding huge swathes of space where he hadn’t before and belting home half-chances he once would have squandered. In a season which saw a dire Blackburn side dice with relegation, Szmodics scored 33 goals in all competitions. Without him, we would have gone down, and there is simply no discussion about it – quite apart from anything else, it was his two brilliant solo goals against champions Leicester City on the final day that mathematically guaranteed survival.

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Every ‘smaller’ side has to endure the painful experience of watching brilliant players emerge and depart for wealthier and loftier teams, but it’s rare that one individual becomes quite so integral to their team and their ability to play winning football. Even with Blackburn’s summer signings making a positive start to the season, it’s hard not to fear about the future with Szmodics’ goals gone – for starters, in the two games he got to play this season on his brief pre-transfer ‘farewell tour’, he scored three times and set one more up.

Which implied that the former Colchester and Peterborough man, who turns 29 next month, isn’t just a one-season wonder. He was still finding pockets of space around the edge of the area with ease and took every chance that fell to him with ease and a precisely-measured finish. He’s learned how to score, and he doesn’t look likely to stop.

Of course, plenty of prolific Championship goalscorers have struggled to make the step up, and only time will tell where Szmodics falls on the Dwight Gayle Scale. Perhaps all those sudden, darting runs into space will be a little less impactful against truly top-level defenders, and perhaps the absolute confidence in his first touch and finish will eventually fade – but all the indications are that he is a player who has found a new level to play at and isn’t planning on slowing down.

It will be interesting to see where he plays in Kieran McKenna’s system. It seems likely that Ipswich continue with the 4-2-3-1 base formation with which they earned their unexpected promotion to the Premier League, and Szmodics could easily fit in there either in the number ten role so excellently occupied by Conor Chaplin last year, or as the main striker instead of Liam Delap.

In a pinch, he could play out wide, but that isn’t where you get the best out of him – his passing and crossing are fine, but not exceptional, and while his running is excellent in space, he isn’t the kind of wizardly dribbler who beats players with ease and regularity. He needs to be in the middle, eking out those half-yards and taking full advantage. On the ball, his game is all about goals.

Off the ball, he’s endearingly aggressive, nipping at heels and kicking at ankles while wearing the permanently peeved expression of a man who gets out of bed every morning and immediately treads on an upturned piece of Lego. He’s not above a little light skullduggery, either – memorably, in a game against Preston North End during his first season at Ewood Park, he leapt Superman-style through the air to punch the ball into the back of the net. He didn’t get away with it, but his attempt at the Hand of Szmod gives the measure of a man who wants to win at any cost. He’s the sort of player that opposing teams grow to hate while his own fans love him more and more.

The fee for the deal may rise to £11m, which looks like a bargain even if his age means that there are only so many years he will have left at the top – and if he can score goals at even half the rate he has in the Championship, then he will be worth every penny and more.

Signing Szmodics could be a brilliant piece of business for Ipswich, just as it is certainly a brutal blow for Blackburn. I’ve survived the loss of Tugay Kerimoglu and Mortan Gamst Pedersen to the ravages of time, the departures of Jordan Rhodes and Ben Brereton Díaz to other teams and even the decline of Bradley Dack after his legs started snapping like Twiglets – but for a little while, watching Szmodics in someone else’s shirt will hurt a hell of a lot. And for a little while, I most probably will hate Ipswich Town, at least a bit. I never could stand Ed Sheeran, anyway.