A Death of Our Club By a Thousand Cuts

[Charnwood]

I hope you guys won't mind me copying and pasting another interesting post written by radiogaga on Wednesday, 1st Feb 2017.

Apologies in advance for the lengthy read but for me it's too well written to want to try and preci.


"Around this time a year ago, I posted a blog on TWTD with concerns that we would fall further behind our rivals as every transfer window came and went, unless noticeable changes were made.

At the time, we were seventh and a handful of points off the play-off places. In spite of that, I and many others voiced concerns that our position papered over a lot of cracks.

Fast forward three months. We finished seventh, which is a very respectable finish. Realistically though, we fell out of play-off contention from January onwards after a run of horrific performances and poor results. We effectively finished seventh by default off the back of the results that had us in fifth on New Year's Day 2016. The year before, we started New Year's Day in the top two.

On neither occasion was Mick McCarthy substantially backed in the respective Januarys. Instead, players sufficient enough to be mere squad players at other Championship clubs came in on loan and left, our seasons petered out on both occasions.

Call me naive but, given what he'd done for us by January last year, McCarthy should have had the trust of the owner to go out and spend what he needed to add one or two players to the squad, and show serious promotion challenging intent. Unfortunately, Marcus Evans's failure to truly back his manager last January was a repeat of his failings the previous season.

Too much is made of McCarthy and the sixth place finish in 2014/15. Finishing sixth was a season to be proud of. In so many ways it was unprecedented success, as we did it with a wafer thin squad.

We were a galvanised underdog that made the play-offs against the odds. People too often forget that we effectively limped into those play-offs, having fallen from top two at New Year's Day to needing results to go our way on the final day. Whilst sixth was an excellent improvement, we should not ignore the serious opportunities that were missed by Evans to truly back McCarthy and give us the best possible chance of winning promotion in that January transfer window, to take us further or at the very least strengthen us for an improved crack the following season.

Ironically, it is Evans's regime that seems to have generated this underdog mentality that made our sixth place finish feel so monumental, existing only as the result of years of mediocrity under his ownership. Evans bought a club that was in good shape in every way except finances in 2007. I remember a genuine feelgood factor around the club as Jim Magilton had us playing attractive attacking, winning football at Portman Road with a young group of players that were ours and proud to wear the shirt. Fans were responding and returning through the turnstiles. It merely shows the scale of which our expectations have been lowered.

This season has been disastrous from start to finish. A poor disjointed pre-season followed our limp conclusion to last season which yielded a measly two wins from our last 10 games. Once again, a lack or reluctance to invest in new players cost the club dearly as only Grant Ward and Adam Webster arrived in exchange for six-figure sums.

Evans hinted in his programme notes for our last home game of last season that the money was available for McCarthy to buy the right player at the right place. It clearly remains to be seen what the maximum right place is defined as being, but this appears on the eye as being another cheap PR gesture to sway undecided season ticket holders with an early bird renewal deadline looming. We've had too many of them that it simply feels like the club are crying wolf, and the conclusion of the August transfer window and yesterday's are arguably the straws that may have broken the camel's back with many wavering over season ticket renewals.

Evans and McCarthy allowed Daryl Murphy to leave late in the previous transfer window. Our poor recruitment efforts in the summer compounded our disillusionment further by the sale of a popular fans' favourite for a sum of money that few other championship clubs (if any) would allow their top goalscorer to leave for.

Even Rotherham valued their top goalscorer Danny Ward at £5 million, considerably higher than we sold Murphy. Admittedly Murphy was 33 and wanted the chance to play for Newcastle, that cannot be held against him. However, it was weak of the club to sell a player that they had happily committed to keeping on a new contract without getting a replacement signed first.

Three million pounds is not a great amount money in the modern game and certainly not enough to replace a goalscorer, it was a backwards move for us beyond comprehension. Leon Best was brought in to plug the gap - hindsight is a wonderful thing, but even the most staunch Town fans expected little of Best. Much like the unforgettable fire sale of Jordan Rhodes, we shot ourselves in the foot big time by undervaluing the difference good goalscorers can make both in the immediate and long-term future.

So we were told, the money from Murphy's sale would be used in January. Technically it has been invested during this window in loan fees, paying player wages for our new free agents, but it's a paltry and desperate excuse. Too often under Evans, the club has been left on bare bones as we sell/lose our best assets without making adequate replacements.

With the exception of Aaron Cresswell (which paved the way for Tyrone Mings' emergence), the likes of Grant Leadbitter, Gareth McAuley, Damien Delaney, Connor Wickham, Jon Walters, Mings, Jon Stead and Murphy all left the club without being suitably replaced at the time. Whilst our recent managers have had many failings, they have not been aided a great deal by the lack of resources they were given in rebuilding teams around losing key players.

And alas the latest transfer window farce which completely contradicts the mysterious Five-Point Plan recently outlined by Evans. For the record, I like the Five-Point Plan. It promotes everything I want to see the club doing - building itself around a successful academy, shrewd player recruitment and a stable management set-up that delivers attractive football.

The problem is that saying it is much easier than putting it into practice as the club frequently demonstrate. Fast forward a few weeks, not a single youngster starts against Derby or Huddersfield. Our promising young academy striker Ben Morris barely makes the bench in spite of our struggles for goals and pledges that youth will get their chance. How a £10,000 signing from non-league strolls into the club and is getting on the pitch within weeks of signing, whilst a young academy striker desperate for a chance to prove himself sits in the reserves, really is incredible.

More perplexing is the loan signing of a young striker that can't even get in another Championship side. No disrespect to Dominic Samuel, but where is the commitment to our academy that the club has the audacity to ask fans to donate to when purchasing their season tickets in exchange for an unrealistic and unforthcoming reward of a free Premier League season ticket?

Emyr Huws is a player I rated a couple of years ago, but the most we will gain from having him is at best two or three good months before he returns to Cardiff. You can be sure that if he does well here, he won't be coming back here next season. Where in the Five-Point Plan is signing other Championship teams' players on loan to develop them, when we should be committed to developing our own? The arrivals of three other experienced short-term signings hardly matches up to the Five- Point Plan description.

Expecting any manager to build a successful team under such constraints is almost like asking a chef to cook with half of his ingredients. McCarthy is the victim of his own success, after three progressive years having been built on a foundation of good free transfers and loans.

Sadly the standard of achievable free transfers are no longer of the same standard that McCarthy was able to bring in a few years ago. We appear to continue to perservere with a transfer strategy that worked very well once but will always fail more often than it succeeds. For every Daryl Murphy, you have to go through five or six Balint Bajners, and that is the market that Town appear to primarily operate these days.

This is a team that now needs desperate rebuilding - Luke Chambers and Christophe Berra are no longer the dominating centre-halves we had two years ago, nor are Cole Skuse and Kevin Bru ideal for this level. Freddie Sears is a completely different player to the one that was brimming with confidence and goals when we bought him, whilst David McGoldrick and Teddy Bishop (regarded by many as our most creative players) are simply not reliable.

Our team is anything but settled or building for the future, with gaping holes for next season all over. The persistence with 35-year-old Jonathan Douglas is further evidence of both our manager's short-termism and the lack of options our wafer thin and recruitment malnourished squad possesses.

The football has been extremely poor and McCarthy does not help himself by stubbornly persisting with starting/refusing to criticise underperforming players, nor does he help his cause by talking about youth getting their chance only to field sides with no youngsters in the squad.

There is no long-term plan or identity in this current team and there appears to be absolutely no prospect of it any time soon. Performances have dropped to a whole new low this season (last night, Forest on Sky and Fulham on Boxing Day are as bad as we've looked for many years), although both FA Cup ties against Lincoln were the ultimate humiliation.

Let's put lack of investment to one side, we played like an out of date team against a Conference team who looked far more creative and industrious than us. That has nothing to do with investment, that is all to do with how your players are managed to play football.

The club responds with no suggestion that the defeat is a low point in the club's history, only the empty gesture of offering free coach travel to the last game of the season if you went to Sincil Bank. Fans are more than customers - all of us who went to Lincoln would have said no to a refund or free coach travel in exchange for a January of genuine long-term improvements to the squad, but we have once again been let down.

It remains to be seen where this barren period is going to take us next. But for the second year running, my thoughts remain the same. Unless major change is made, the club is dying a very slow death."

[hallamblue]

EVANS OUT......

[nicscreamer]

Read this myself this morning. Really good post that sums up how a lot us feel at the moment.

I used to feel proud of supporting town. You could tell people who you supported and they would all know the good feeling the club had, the family way it was run, the fact we were a friendly and successful (for our size) club.

Now whenever I mention I support Ipswich people just say - Oh, sorry.

Its depressing and something needs to change. I know MM is not all to blame, and ME has a massive share of responsibility, but in all honesty Marcus isn't going anywhere, and we need a change of manager just to freshen the whole place up. Its stale and dull and we are treading water at best. Mick is to blame for a lot of that with his dull tactics, mindless team selection and stale attitude. Every manager has a shelf life, and I think Micks has just about run out.
I am sure it will be the summer before there is even a sniff of him going, but I just hope we survive in the championship for that long. I am worried.

[jeremy rusher]

As mentioned by someone else in another forum. It is about time the Football Association stepped in and try to stop famous football clubs being rinsed by corporate businessmen who have no interest other than taking money. Ipswich Town FC is at great risk. Sheepshanks came and went, so will Marcus Evans. So will the managers and players, all taking their bit of cake along the way.

The writing is on the wall.

[barmy billy]

An excellent read.

To my mind there is little doubt that if things continue as at present, ITFC will drop out of The Championship in the next couple of seasons.

[Bluemike]

As mentioned by someone else in another forum. It is about time the Football Association stepped in and try to stop famous football clubs being rinsed by corporate businessmen who have no interest other than taking money. Ipswich Town FC is at great risk. Sheepshanks came and went, so will Marcus Evans. So will the managers and players, all taking their bit of cake along the way.

The writing is on the wall.

That is all well and good but the fact remains that without ME we would have gone out of business, we were closer than most realise, I did not see a queue of investors lining up to take it on and while it has gone sour under Evans nobody can underestimate just what a big mess we were in before his arrival.

[J4ck22]

I really don't know how ME expects us to progress when the amount of money being spent in this league is ever rising, yet he won't put enough in to keep us competitive. McCarthy is a good manager, but he cannot keep us in this league having to rely on players who were just deemed not good enough for their previous club and released. Say what you want about his tactics but he's had his hands tied from day one and looking back, the team that managed to make the play-offs two years ago looks even more remarkable when you consider who we had at the time.

Mick isn't blameless by any means, but he's had a right battle on his hands signing out of contract, rejected players and trying to mould them into something half decent. Sometimes it works, but most of the time they prove to be what they are, rejects. Meanwhile Sheffield Wednesday just paid £10m for Rhodes. Ten f**king million in the Championship. It's going to keep going that way and we're going to keep falling behind and I think that without proper investment, we'll go down in the next season or two. It can't sustain us forever and it's just gonna get worse as the gulf of quality keeps increasing.

[Bluemike]

As good as that article is it is ridiculous the way the 6th & 7th placed finishes are dismissed, even suggesting we finished 7th by default, what bullshit, you finish where you finish on merit over a marathon 46 games, no if's or buts's. That aside it is a pretty good read.

[J4ck22]

As good as that article is it is ridiculous the way the 6th & 7th placed finishes are dismissed, even suggesting we finished 7th by default, what bullshit, you finish where you finish on merit over a marathon 46 games, no if's or buts's. That aside it is a pretty good read.

Exactly. We deserved those places however well people think we played, that's simply irrelevant.

[number 9]

Remember how many of us were bemused when we didn't strengthen in January that play off season? I do, we were completely frustrated at the lack of transfer activity. Hate to be so negative, but that could have been our penultimate chance for promotion...at least with ME. All we can hope for really is a future owner willing to spend millions. I seriously doubt that will ever happen. I still love ITFC, always will and still have hope...but my god, 10-million for JR?!

[Bluemike]

Yes No.9 I do indeed remember how many fans were bemused by our lack of transfer activity when we were well placed to push on, of course we will never know if it would have made the difference, much would have depended on MM's ability to bring the right players in, it could well have ended up going the other way with Matteo Sereni type disasters.

As for anohter mega rich owner coming our way I just don't see it happening and I have my doubts ME will be going anywhere anytime soon.

[barmy billy]

Is anyone able to tell me what Evans motivation is in owning ITFC, because as sure as hell I have no idea?

[Bluemike]

I'm with you Billy cus I have no idea anymore either. I am one of the few that does not believe all this tax evasion cobblers one bit.

Welcome back by the way, good to see you posting again

[arana peligrosa]

Is anyone able to tell me what Evans motivation is in owning ITFC, because as sure as hell I have no idea?

Simple answer, Marcus Evans has NO motivation in owning Ipswich Town Football Club.

Say again, don't know the full extent of Evans' other business enterprises but you can rest assured this club is nowhere near any top list of priorities he may seek to undertake. (Still hard to comprehend we've had 10 years of this name running our club and next to zero regards any actual progression)

[Bluemike]

And as for the stupid comment of limping into the play offs, we lost 2 of the last 9 games for crying out loud, these people may be able to pen a good piece but the content is often factually incorrect, I guess it makes the club look even worse though so it's job done.

[The Odious Mr Rossi]

I keep saying it and will say it again - Evans wants to keep ITFC as a loss-making part of his business.
The reasons for this have nothing to do with tax evasion at all - it's simply that having a loss making side to his empire gives him a number of tax advantages and allows him to pay far bigger dividends to the shareholders