| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:16 - Feb 21 with 1135 views | SouperJim |
Be grateful to see what's behind the paywall |  |
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| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:37 - Feb 21 with 1016 views | mrfixit426 |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:16 - Feb 21 by SouperJim |
Be grateful to see what's behind the paywall |
Create a login and you get one free article a week I think. |  | | |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:39 - Feb 21 with 1002 views | Bluefish |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:37 - Feb 21 by mrfixit426 |
Create a login and you get one free article a week I think. |
I was going to but then I saw it was written by Jim White, presumably the same Jim White? |  |
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| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:39 - Feb 21 with 993 views | Keno |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:39 - Feb 21 by Bluefish |
I was going to but then I saw it was written by Jim White, presumably the same Jim White? |
its is the same article that has been posted 'a few' times already or a different one? |  |
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| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:40 - Feb 21 with 981 views | Guthrum |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:39 - Feb 21 by Bluefish |
I was going to but then I saw it was written by Jim White, presumably the same Jim White? |
Different Jim White to the one on the radio. I was confused by that, too. |  |
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| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:41 - Feb 21 with 972 views | mrfixit426 |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:39 - Feb 21 by Bluefish |
I was going to but then I saw it was written by Jim White, presumably the same Jim White? |
Different Jim white. | | | |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:41 - Feb 21 with 970 views | Bluefish |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:40 - Feb 21 by Guthrum |
Different Jim White to the one on the radio. I was confused by that, too. |
Ah cheers I'll have a read then | |
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| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:41 - Feb 21 with 971 views | Guthrum |
| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:39 - Feb 21 by Keno |
its is the same article that has been posted 'a few' times already or a different one? |
Same one. | |
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| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 09:47 - Feb 21 with 952 views | Bluefish |
Another article that fuels the lambert deflection. All of these things add up and mask the mess he has caused and the damage he is continuing to do | |
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| Daily Telegraph article - an outsiders view on 15:35 - Feb 21 with 776 views | GaryCooper |
How Ipswich Town lurched into crisis: Mutinous fans, hapless manager and a silent owner sending club into free fall
Once thriving academy suffering, precarious financial situation and mid-table mediocrity in third tier, what has gone wrong at Portman Road?
By
Jim White
19 February 2021 - 8:00am
Flynn Downes is sent off
Flynn Downes' red card against Northampton sums up Ipswich's season CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
On Monday morning, something odd happened in East Anglia. Outside Playford Road, Ipswich Town’s training complex, a group of fans arrived to protest about the state of their club. To make themselves visible, they set off flares. A couple of the pyrotechnics were thrown over the perimeter fence and an advertising hoarding caught fire. First team preparations were temporarily halted while the minor conflagration was dealt with.
It was hard for many an outsider to reconcile what had happened with its location. This was Suffolk not Serbia, Ipswich not Istanbul. Moreover this was at a club which, if it is thought about at all, is largely regarded with a condescending metropolitan sneer, reckoned a gentle, sleepy backwater.
But for those in the know, the insurrection had been coming. Ipswich is a club in freefall, an institution on the lip of a precipice. And a history of consistently punching above its weight is of no comfort in the stark reality of present decline.
The protest was organised by a fan group called Blue Action to mark the point when their club had sunk to its lowest league position in 64 years. But if they hoped their visible ire might spur the team into action, they were to be disappointed. The following evening, Ipswich drew 0-0 at Portman Road with managerless Northampton Town, League One’s bottom club. Fielding a team including five young loanees, they failed to register a shot on target until the 76th minute. Many of the season ticket holders obliged by the pandemic to watch home matches on a streaming service had switched off long before the end.
Once this was the place that served as an apprenticeship for England managers espousing progressive modern football, winning the title under Sir Alf Ramsey and the Uefa Cup under Sir Bobby Robson. Now it is languishing in the third tier, boring its regulars to distraction even as it is being sucked into a relegation struggle.
After the match, Paul Lambert, the club manager, gave an interview with the East Anglia Daily Times that was delivered with considerably more passion than had been demonstrated on the pitch.
“Everything. Absolutely everything,” he said when asked what had gone wrong at a club that was in the Championship play-offs as recently as 2015. “You know, the manager takes the whole thing on his neck and on his shoulders. I'm not going to be that lamb to the slaughter when there are things around here that I know shouldn't be the way they are. I'm loathed to criticise anybody, but collectively this is not right. Forty years ago... Terry Butcher, unbelievable, Johnny Wark, unbelievable, Paul Mariner... unbelievable guys, top guys. They must be looking at it and thinking: 'what the hell's happened here?’” On that at least he is right: the club's former heroes are as bemused as they are appalled by the precipitate decline.
Darren Bent, who first learned the game in the Ipswich academy, says: “There are people there, not argumentative people but people who have been there years, who feel the soul has been ripped out of the football club. These are people who don’t have a bad word about anybody and they’re not happy.”
For those lighting flares in protest, much of the blame lies with Lambert. As if his time at hated rivals Norwich was not enough to tarnish his reputation in Suffolk, his record at the club has been dismal. An inverse Sam Allardyce, he was brought in to stop relegation from the Championship in 2019 but failed. With some irony, one of the first things he did when appointed was to buy the leaders of Blue Action a drink, keen to listen to their views on improving the atmosphere at the ground. Since then, the relationship has soured to the point one of the banners flourished at the demonstration read: “Thanks for the beers, but time has been called at the bar.”
Mark McGuinness of Ipswich Town heads the ball clear during the Sky Bet League One match between Peterborough United and Ipswich Town at Weston Homes Stadium on February 09, 2021 in Peterborough, England. Sporting stadiums around the UK remain under strict restrictions due to the Coronavirus Pandemic as Government social distancing laws prohibit fans inside venues resulting in games being played behind closed doors.
Ipswich are languishing in mid-table mediocrity in League One, well behind even the likes of Peterborough CREDIT: Getty Images Europe
Indeed, there is a sense among supporters that, despite signing a four-year contract last January, Lambert would have already gone had the pandemic not intervened. They reckon the goal shy football served up by his team (the midfielder Gwion Edwards is the leading scorer this season with just five) would have been reflected in tumbling attendances.
“Disenchantment set in at the end of 2019,” reckons Rich Woodward of the Blue Monday podcast. “In the stadium it was growing. By the time the first lockdown happened in March things were turning really sour.”
Since then, as Lambert has banished a couple of senior players to train with the Under-23s, dissent has been mushrooming inside and outside the club. His initial attempt to engage with supporters has changed into him banning the editor of a fan website from attending press conferences. This is not the mark of a happy club.
But even if the fans got their way and Ipswich replaced him with a candidate they want, like the Cowley brothers or Lincoln’s Michael Appleton, would they fare any better? There is one thing Bent and Lambert can agree on: at Ipswich there are issues way beyond any manager’s remit.
As is invariably the case in football, questions attend the club owner. Not that we can ask Marcus Evans: it took him 11 years to grant an interview even to the local newspaper, the East Anglian Daily Times. His last public statement was on the club website in December when he reminded fans calling for Lambert's dismissal of what had happened when McCarthy's popularity had similarly tumbled: "Be careful what you wish for" he counselled.
English Football League - League One
Team P W D L GD Pts
6 Sunderland 28 12 11 5 18 47
7 Accrington Stanley 27 13 7 7 11 46
8 Oxford United 27 13 5 9 9 44
9 Charlton Athletic 29 12 8 9 5 44
10 Plymouth Argyle 29 11 9 9 -4 42
11 MK Dons 29 11 8 10 6 41
12 Ipswich Town 27 12 5 10 3 41
Buying Ipswich in 2007 after it had been run for generations as a family concern by the Cobbold brewing dynasty, Evans was initially greeted as a saviour. He cleared the club of debt and backed a succession of managers - from Roy Keane to Mick McCarthy — in the transfer market. Evans’s investment, though, came in the form of loans; the debts were transferred rather than paid off. According to the 2018-19 accounts, the most recently available, the club now owes his company more than £96 million.
As it has many a lover league club without television income, playing during lockdown has devastated the cash flow of a club which had already operated at a loss for 12 of the previous 13 seasons. Budgets have necessarily been squeezed.
But many insiders are increasingly concerned that prudence has turned into parsimony. Loyal members of the backroom staff have departed, while Portman Road is in need of significant investment. The club’s once thriving academy is suffering too. Lambert might have installed the former favourites Butcher and Kieron Dyer to educate another generation that could be transferred on for profit. But, with the scouting network reduced, not since Tyrone Mings was sold to Bournemouth in 2015 has a similarly profitable gem been unearthed.
What makes things worse is that there can be little hope of resources increasing in the immediate future. Evans’s wider business in conferencing and corporate hospitality has been badly compromised by the pandemic: everywhere his assets have been starved of income. Always keen to run the club on lean business lines, he has taken full control of matters during the pandemic.
It is against that backdrop that Lambert, a manager seemingly adrift in a perfect storm not entirely of his own making, is obliged to turn things around. Starting on Saturday against the division’s form team Oxford United. Though even if he engineers the unlikely and delivers a handsome win, one thing will not change: a club that was once reckoned the epitome of careful stewardship is rapidly sleep-walking into irrelevance. |  | | |
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