Exiting chief executive Simon Clegg has confirmed that, as TWTD reported earlier, directors Jonathan Symonds and Ian Milne will become Town’s joint-managing directors with fellow board member Martin Pitcher working with them. Owner Marcus Evans will also take an increasingly hands-on role at the club he took control of at the end of 2007.
Clegg told TWTD: "The incoming team will be Jonathan Symonds, Ian Milne and Martin Pitcher with the first two as joint-managing directors.
"Martin will continue to perform a finance function and Marcus is going to play a much more hands-on role with the club, which I think is genuinely good for the club.
"It’s his investment, it’s his money that’s keeping us afloat, and it demonstrates once again that he wants to get closer to it.”
He says he expects Evans to spend more time at Portman Road than he has up to now but doesn’t know whether the Blues’ owner will become a more public figure, having previously been keen to avoid the limelight.
Clegg says the matter of who will take over from him as the ‘face’ of the club has not yet been resolved: "The issue as to who is going to be the face of the club, who is going to be the brunt of the fans’ frustration going forward, will be someone else’s problem, it won’t be mine and I think they are still working that through.”
There has been some speculation that former midfielder Simon Milton, who is currently the club’s academy sponsorship manager and player liaison officer, might take on a new role but Clegg says he isn’t aware of any plans along those lines: "That’s not within my remit and I’m not privy to that, they’ve not shared that with me. But I have to say, that’s not been a topic of huge discussion.”
The 53-year-old says he has been considering moving on from Town since the summer: "I started discussing it with Marcus at the end of last season. I’d been there three seasons and if we didn’t achieve promotion this season I’m not sure how much longer I could go.
"My family still live down in Farnham in Surrey and this is an incredibly busy job. A lot of fans think it’s all about sitting in the directors’ box watching football matches, having fat boy lunches in the directors’ box and a little bit of work in the office. This is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week business.
"And with the family still in Surrey and only getting home a maximum of one day a week, it’s taken its toll and I’ve not had as much enjoyment out of it as I hoped and expected to, predominantly because we’ve not been able to deliver on the pitch.”
We'll have more from Simon Clegg on his departure from Town tomorrow.