BBC Sports Ipswich Town can push squad and loan limits in January 2025 window.

Top left, clockwise: Harry Clarke, Ali Al-Hamadi, Luke Woolfenden, and Massimo Luongo have all seen limited action in the Premier League. Ipswich Town plan to be active in the January transfer window. Stuart Watson looks at how the team plans to push squad rules to the limit. We’d all grown accustomed to the loan regulations in the EFL. Clubs could have as many loan players as they wanted, but they could only name five to their matchday squad. Things are different in the Premier League.

At any given moment, top-flight clubs can only have two players on loan from English pyramid clubs. And you are not permitted to bring in both of those players from the same team. Ipswich presently has just one domestic loan player, Kalvin Phillips. So, as things stand, they may bring in one more Premier League player on loan from a team other than Manchester City. Another thing to keep in mind is that Premier League clubs cannot buy a player and then immediately loan him to another Premier League club within the same transfer window. Furthermore, Premier League clubs are allowed to bring in a maximum of six international loans (including Scotland) per season.

Ipswich currently have two foreign loans in Jens Cajuste (Napoli) and Ben Godfrey (Atalanta).

Last season, Burnley took advantage of the above rules to have five players on loan during the second half of the season, with four of them coming from clubs in Germany, Belgium and France.

SQUAD RESTRICTIONS

Premier League clubs, like those in the Championship, are limited to registering a maximum of 25’senior’ players at the end of each transfer window. This season, players born on or after January 1, 2003 are not included towards that restriction. Town signed 25 players at the end of the summer window: Muric, Walton, Slicker; Tuanzebe, Johnson, H.Clarke; O’Shea, Greaves, Woolfenden, Burgess; Davis, Townsend; Morsy, Cajuste, Phillips, Taylor, Luongo; Burns, Ogbene, Chaplin, Szmodics, J.Clarke, Broadhead; Hirst, Al-Hamadi. Both Omari Hutchinson (DOB: October 2003) and Liam Delap (DOB: February 2003) were and remain ineligible.

MAKING SPACE

Town have already recruited one senior player this month, versatile defender Ben Godfrey, and it is understood boss Kieran McKenna wants to add up to three more attacking players to his injury-plagued, relegation-battling squad. While the transfer window is open, clubs can register and deregister players on a game-by-game basis, allowing them to constantly change their 25-man roster. Chiedozie Ogbene, who is poised to miss the rest of the season due to an Achilles injury sustained at Brentford, is expected to make room for Godfrey before the game against Brighton on January 16. That’s it for deregistrations, as Axel Tuanzebe, Conor Chaplin, Omari Hutchinson, and George Hirst might all be back in a matter of weeks.

So if three more players come in, then three have to depart? Not necessarily.

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