MD Ian Milne has urged wavering season ticket holders to stick with the Blues, despite Town now looking highly unlikely to repeat last season’s play-off finish. The early bird deadline for buying 2016/17 season tickets at the cheapest prices passes at midday today.
"We’re not in the relegation zone, we’re currently eighth and hopefully we’ll get higher,” Milne told BBC Radio Suffolk’s Life’s a Pitch prior to Saturday’s game against Brentford.
"I don’t think anything’s changed in many ways. Yes, we’d love to be in the top six, but we’re still a great football club with a great following.”
Town currently have just over 14,000 season ticket holders but with anecdotal evidence suggesting that a number of fans don’t plan to renew, many citing the style of play as much as results, that figure is likely to drop, perhaps as far the 12,000s, where sales were prior a boost provided by last season's success.
"That’s a pity, we’re still up there,” Milne added. "I understand what people say about it not being attractive football, but you can play attractive football and be in the relegation zone.
"It’s a very tough league, it’s gets tougher every year. We have to play to that, play to our strengths and keep the fight up.”
He dismisses suggestions that 2015/16 has been a wasted season: "Absolutely not, we have expanded the squad, the boys are still very confident, that’s where we want them to be and they’ve all worked extremely hard. Of course we’re feeling down, we’d love to be in the top six but it’s not over yet.”
He added: "Looking at just the players’ salary bill, it’s gone up 25 per cent over the last two seasons and 15 per cent over the last season, so that shows the expanding squad.
"We could say we’ve been unfortunate with some injuries, some key injuries, and it’s really good to see David McGoldrick and Teddy Bishop back and maybe they will give us that little bit of extra creativity that we need.”
Whether manager Mick McCarthy will be handed more cash for next season will be decided in the summer.
"The budget’s gone up and there’s going to be a discussion between Mick and Marcus in the summer about players and we need to wait for that,” the Blues MD continued.
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"But I have no reason to think that he’s not going to continue to invest at or above the level he’s investing at the moment. There could be more money available, as there has been this season.”
Meanwhile, Milne says there has been no contact from Aston Villa regarding McCarthy, who remains second-favourite for the vacant manager’s job at the Premier League’s bottom side, behind ex-Leicester boss Nigel Pearson, with some bookies quoting a price as low as 5/2.
"Nothing at all, it’s just a lovely rumour for certain Aston Villa fans, I suspect,” Milne added.
"He’s here to stay, I saw him on Friday and we were talking about open days and pre-season and what have you.”"