Blues boss Paul Jewell has defended Simon Clegg in the wake of the recent criticism aimed at the club's chief executive. The Town manager says he’s the one who should take the blame and the flak for the Blues’ poor on-field performances.
Jewell said: "I think when you’ve been in football all your life, one thing’s for sure, you’re always going to get stick. That’s the way football is.
"We have to hold our hands up, certainly as a management team, and say ‘we’re getting beaten, so people aren’t going to like me at the moment’. At the end of the day we’d like to be liked and the only way to be liked is to win football matches.
"There’s a lot of good work that goes on at Ipswich that Simon does, but the most important thing for people in Ipswich is winning matches on the pitch and it’s not really Simon’s fault that we’re losing matches."
He says that criticism is inevitable when teams are playing badly but that the buck stops with him: "I don’t know what’s been said, but I’m sure he’s had a lot of unfair stick. It’s easy when things are going badly to lash out at someone and it’s normally the manager, and apparently the chief executive’s getting some as well.
"I take full responsibility. If anyone wants to throw any flak, just throw it my way. I don’t like it, but I accept some of it and move on. It’s not as if it’s something I haven’t seen before.”