Ipswich Town values the wrong type of continuity. This club has produced two world-class managers. Other clubs have statues, streets and stands named after their great players. We don’t.

There is no Ray Crawford Stand, or Kevin Beattie Way but references to Sir Bobby and Sir Alf are everywhere. It is something we are rightly proud of, but it has become an albatross around our neck.

Our belief that we produce great managers has led us to think that to do so is an end in itself. We treat all managers including the poor ones - 'The Ipswich Way'.

Sir Bobby said he came to Portman Road because it was a club that didn’t write the manager’s name on the office door in chalk. It is something the club still holds true. Ipswich believe that managers need time to develop and overlooks short-term problems.

The club gives managers great freedom in transfer policy, and allows them to hire and fire their own coaching staff. In short we expect them to be good at everything, let them get on with it, and then we all moan when it goes wrong At the same time we have allowed our managers to develop a short-term view of the team. The club and particularly the supporters are impatient for success. We believe our own hype that we are always good enough to get promoted next year.

Responding to this, each year the manager lets half the players go and brings in another lot, who look on paper like they ought to be able to form a good team. But somehow they fail to gel.

It is hardly surprising. If you look at the best clubs, it is continuity of the team that matters. Wise heads like Scholes, Giggs, Terry, Lampard, Carragher, Gerrard are the spine and the guiding force of the best clubs. Don’t underestimate the importance of role models for younger players, especially when results aren't going well. The other factor of successful clubs is that the best coaches are more transient. Sir Alex Ferguson excepted, look at Mourinho, Del Bosque, Hiddink, they never stay at a club for long. Real Madrid, Barca and Chelsea change head coaches every season or two, even after a successful campaign. They have a long-term plan led by a director of football and then hire and fire coaches to keep everybody on their toes. Good people have come and gone from this club, but apart from brief periods of brilliance under John Lyall and George Burley this club has been getting it wrong for nearly 30 years. Let's face it, Ipswich are very unlikely to produce another Bobby Robson, and much as I like Paul Jewell, his job security and career prospects are not really my main concern.

I do however think a club like this can, and should be one of the top sides in this division, and in with a shout of promotion. The way we achieve that is through a strong team with an ethos that is built up incrementally over years, each change building on and valuing what is good about the last.

At moments like this it is easy to think that everything is wrong, but the real problem is Ipswich has thrown together a whole new bunch of players which the manager has had no time to build into a proper team because he’s spending all his time trying to sign even more players. Paul Jewell is a good man with the ability to get this club promoted, he has brought in players that I believe are good enough to form a promotion chasing team. But at the moment we are assuming he’s responsible for doing everything whilst the club appears to have given him no clear indication of what is expected of him. We need to build continuity back into the team. We can't expect Paul Jewell to be able to do this on his own. The way to do it is appoint a wise director of football with a long-term plan for this club. George Burley perhaps. Leave him in charge of transfer policy and player retention. Then we need to get ruthless with our manager (or coach as we should call him).

The club should set crystal clear expectations for the season and hold him accountable for it. The coach will then be able to be focused on leading training, selecting the right team, match tactics, and building team morale. The director will be responsible for building up a squad and a club that is ready for, and deserves to be promoted.

A club that is far more than the sum of its parts. If we do, in 20 years time perhaps we will be naming a stand after one of the great players who lead us back to glory.

irvinf added 11:16 - Aug 24 So glad this is just your opinion. sometimes I think the bloggers really have very little idea what the hell they are talking about. Leave the ground as it is. The statues are justification of the status the has around the world. If we start naming stands after players then we really need to be looking beyond their playing career to accept that they are acceptable role models. Could you see Liverpool naming a stand after Andy Carroll for example? We have the Bobby Robson stand as well. Managers you have mentioned would be nowhere without the abundance of cash given them and Muriniho doesn't stay anywhere because he falls out with everyone wherever he goes.

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nitroblue1970 added 11:16 - Aug 24 I dont think ive read a more balanced, sensible blog for a long long time! Well said blackandblue!
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Illinoisblue added 11:57 - Aug 24 Where in English football has the director of football role ever worked?
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Calmingwind added 12:03 - Aug 24 The reason alot of clubs don't have statues and stands named after managers is because not many in England have had as much success with English managers as what we have, and for the size of town and resources the success alf & bobby have generated for this club and later English football as a whole is genuinely unique.
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Pessimistic added 12:39 - Aug 24 Personally I like the way Town do things with regard to managers. Sir Bobby Robson and to a lesser extent Sir Alf Ramsey would probably not have got knighthoods if it had not been for the Clubs 'Patience is a virtue' policy. I am of the view that Paul Jewell is happy to have a "hands on" role. It may not be going entirely to plan at the moment but at least he has it in his own hands to put things right. Far too few managers are blessed with this particular courtesy.

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fifeblue added 13:08 - Aug 24 The views in this blog are just plain wrong in so many respects. In recent times we have had problems attracting players, probably owing to a combination of the manager at the time and the club's gradually dwindling reputation over a long period of time (only Coventry have been in this division longer than Town, now). The blog assumes that a director of football would be able to reverse this trend and get it right over a long period of time. There is no guarantee that Burley or anyone else could do this. And, given it would take a long time to implement and bring positive results, we would then have the problem of attracting a good enough coach to implement the tactics using someone else's players. You think someone like Jewell would accept this? It's a non-starter. We are not Real Madrid or Barcelona with limitless resources. The current system is fine but the manager must be gven a chance to make his way work. It took Robson 4 years to build a decent team and Ramsay 6 years. It isn't going to happen overnight unless we get lucky or ruthless like Norwich did over the past two years.

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Lightningboy added 13:17 - Aug 24 In a perfect world i'd like to see George Burley back here, but in the manager's office with a coaching/managerial team of Jim Magilton ,Russell Osman & Fabian Wilnis alongside him. Will never happen though...sadly.
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Steve_M added 14:05 - Aug 24 Most clubs get it "wrong" far more than they get it "right". That's the nature of competitive sport. I would argue that we've only really been getting it wrong with regard to continuity of players for the last five years or so. Mainly because we've acquired a large number of players of average ability who we've shuffled around constantly. On top of that there is an apparent reluctance to coach out players faults or improve the way the team as a whole plays - particularly defensively. The regard that Robson and Ramsey are held is irrelevant. Even the great players of the past would not have stayed for anything like as long in today's football world.

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Ipswich24 added 15:02 - Aug 24 Good blog what your trying to say is Jewell does everything.We need a footballing man as cheif executive or director of football preferbly a person with Ipswich Town running through them and let PJ get on with moulding the players as a team.
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ChestnutSe added 16:49 - Aug 24 Our biggest problem is that we have not got the youths coming off the production line that we had in Robsons day. They provided the spine of the team. Remember we had Burley, Beattie, Butcher, Osman, McCall, Warky, Brazil & Gates. A bit like man U had with Becks, Scholes, Nevilles, Giggsy etc. Just recently we have had Wickham and before that Bent & before that Dyer. Can't think of any other recent big successes. We need 3 - 5 good quality youths coming into the team in the same season or two. We don't seem to get the Scots lads these days, mainly Irish. I wonder what the reasons are for that? If we don't grow our own we have to buy and we can't afford it. The dynamics of footy as regards money are completely different now to Robson and Ramseys time. We can't compete in the money stakes so we have to buy really well on the cheap.

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BlackandBlue added 10:10 - Aug 25 Yes you're right Ipswich24. I beleive the people at this club are actually pretty good, it's the system that doesn't work. Paul Jewel has worked his socks off all summer trying to make signings. It stands to reason if he's spending all his time doing that he'll have no time or energy left to anything else. Our pre-season performances were poor, and in 35 years of supporting this club I've never seen the team looking so lacking in confidence. It looks pretty clear to me that the manager is too rushed off his feet and the team is suffering from lack of leadership on and off the pitch. If the club wants PJ to spend his time bringing in players, fine, bring in a first team coach. If they want him to be preparing the team for matches, fine, bring in a director of football. But don't expect him to do both then blame him when it doesn't work.

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Tractorog added 10:48 - Aug 25 I disagree with this blogs headline, but agree with a lot of the content. What makes club A different from club B is its herritage, traditions and history and you can no more have Ipswich without the managerial tradition than you can have a certain England left back and monogomy. I would agree that we have been too prone to back managers who did not fit the Ipswich tradition. Roy Keane is a prime example. I wanted to be loyal to the manager - but boy Roy made it hard to like him, his team or his style of football. The "tradition" that Sir Alf and Sir Bobby came from was that of an managers building a passing attacking team that played for the team and not stars. Sure we had great players but not so many great egos in those days. I'm not as sure about PJs man management as I once was. His reaction to the thrashings we have received has been to pick on players publically and has done much to undermine the fragile confidence of our central defenders. Yes Ainsley and Smith were like rabbits in the headlights, but they are young and have much to learn. The fault was that we had to rely on them because we had lost McAuley and others and had not replaced them. The fault was with management in other words. To slag off the players whilst justified from fans is not good player management. If they were not ready then whose fault is it? Ultimately it has to be the managers, even though Paul had not had long to train them and is not at fault if they were not ready for the step up, he is at fault for not seeing they were not ready and to have no (fit) plan B. The only strategy that makes sense for this club is to bring on young players from the accademy and to have a wide scouting network finding the Muhrens etc of the future. PJ may be building that we will see. If he isnt we should get rid of PJ, but once we have found a manager capable of managing in the Ipswich way then we have to back him and the team come 7-1 defeats and losing to Norwich until he has had enough time to prove himself. Personally I think MEs approach of 2 years is about right, but it will not work if ME a). Doesn't identify a manger in the Ipswich mould b). Stops backing the manager after a year and lets him lose the team you have and not buy any more players. He has to sack as soon as he has lost confidence.

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Fatboy added 18:00 - Aug 26 Goddard Road Whitton Church Lane Woods(tone) Avenue Coopers Way (Claydon) I'm sure there must be more.
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hype313 added 10:06 - Aug 27 Agree with your blog, but we live in a "want it now" culture with the way the clubs view getting to the PL. Money has overtaken values unfortunately. One point though, Barca do stick with thier managers, I believe Rijkaard and Guardiola in the past 9 years?
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