Derek Bowden has denied reports that owner Marcus Evans spent much of last week sounding out members of staff regarding the Blues' disappointing start to the season. Bowden has also for the first time outlined Town's position regarding the claimed charging of ex-players for cups of tea.

Town's chief executive told TWTD: "Marcus was here for the Wigan game and then went home, so he didn't stay for three days. He came back on Thursday because one of his companies, Linguarama, had a European managers' meeting here and he came to address them.

"He spent about half an hour at Portman Road introducing himself and talking to some people and then he went down to the training ground. He had a bite to eat with the coaching staff and the players and then he was on the 3.30 train home. So, he was here for a few hours.

"He wasn't sounding people out, he was just introducing himself to people privately, which is the way he wants to do it, which is absolutely fine.”

Bowden says he and manager Jim Magilton are in constant contact with Evans: "I speak to him or exchange emails with him every day, Jim similarly every day and there are key personnel who meet with Marcus quite frequently.

"We have review meetings once every month and in his own time he will meet up with other key members of staff, but he'll do that privately and in a very low key way. He enjoys having his privacy and he wishes that to remain the case.”

Despite the undeniably slow start to the season, Bowden says Magilton's position is not in question: "Jim's not under any pressure other than the pressure he puts upon himself. Clearly he's a very passionate, committed man and he wants results to go our way from day one.

"He puts himself under pressure in terms of wanting the best performance from the team he puts out, but as far as external pressure from the owner or anybody else there's none.

"It's been made very clear to him that this is a ‘project' to get the club from this division to the next division over time. We don't expect to be promoted in four weeks or eight weeks or 12 weeks because there has been a lot of change over the summer and it will take time to gel, and Jim has that time. I don't know many teams which would bring in 11 players and immediately click.”

Ultimately, the plan is for Town's future to be in the higher echelons of the Premier League: "The ambition is not just to get promoted. The ambition is to get promoted, cling on and then progress and who knows where we might end up.

"Clearly no one expects us to be in the Champions League in the next couple of years, but if we get out of this division into the next one and continue to build, then who knows where we might end up in five, six, seven years' time.”

Despite Town now being in private hands, Bowden says shareholders in the PLC, which owns 12.5% of the club, will still be kept informed of the financial picture: "There will be a PLC AGM here, probably in January. What we said was that we would hold an AGM of the PLC where we will take shareholders in the PLC through the report and accounts of the PLC.

"Within reason we will give shareholders in the PLC a view of the financial position of the football club as a whole and we will give them the opportunity to question the PLC directors and the manager as at previous AGMs.”

Bowden says the situation regarding the charging for tea and coffee in the Champions' Lounge was not as reported: "There are two rooms underneath the directors' box. There's the scouts' room where scouts receive complimentary tea, coffee and sandwiches. That's the protocol, that's what we expect when our scouts go away and they expect when the come here.

"There's also the Champions' Lounge which is used by many people who are in the directors' box who aren't in the boardroom, a broad church of people from in and around Ipswich.

"Not so much corporate customers, more people who are associated with the club such as the Mayor, the MP, county FA officials or other people eligible for seats in the directors' box.

"We just took a view that given all that we are investing in the football club, there was no reason that in this particular area everything should be free, as historically it has been.

"We decided we would charge for food, but not for tea and coffee. We charged for tea and coffee at the first two games in error, something was lost in translation, and we subsequently rescinded it.

"There may have been one or two elderly ex-players in that lounge, but it wasn't a case of, for example, charging Fabian Wilnis for a cup of tea. If there were 60 people in that room, two of them were ex-players.

"We allocate 10 sets of free tickets to ex-players, but they don't sit in the directors' box and don't use that lounge, they sit anywhere in the ground.”

Bowden says the club will take into account the current financial climate when they come to address ticket pricing for next season: "We'll look at 2009/10 pricing in the next few weeks and the credit crunch will be in our thoughts. If you look at attendances across the league currently, I suspect they are down in most divisions and that's because football is already quite expensive.

"With people finding more and more pressure on their wallets, it's more and more difficult to justify above inflation increases.

"That said, our costs go up every year - rates, power, water, policing - and we do have to pass the costs on and the owner is clearly having to subsidise quite a large loss, so it's not although he's asking fans to bear the brunt.”

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