Today marks the 10th anniversary of confirmation that owner Marcus Evans would be taking control of Ipswich Town.
Speaking on December 3rd 2007, then-chairman David Sheepshanks hailed the news that Evans would be taking an 87.5 per cent stake in the Blues as "a massively important day” for the club, which had struggled in the years after coming out of its 2003 period of administration.
An EGM later in the month rubber-stamped the deal, which saw Evans pay £12 million for Town as well as £8 million for the club’s £32 million historical debt.
Evans has continued to inject cash into Town, around £6 million a year in recent seasons, in the form of loans, which has taken the club’s overall debt to more than £80 million - virtually all owed to him - a sum which almost certainly will never be repaid and is likely to be written off if he were ever to look to sell the Blues. Town’s accounts for the 2016/17 season will be released ahead of the PLC AGM on Monday 11th December.
Managing director Ian Milne says Evans, 54, still remains committed to Town and currently has no plans to move on.
"He’s still continuing. It is 10 years. It shows how much effort and money he’s put into the club,” Milne told BBC Radio Suffolk’s Life’s a Pitch on Saturday when asked about the anniversary.
"He was up here very recently, spent a lot of time with us and he loves being up here. He enjoys it, he comes and watches and long may it continue.”
Publicity-shy Evans’s aim was to quickly gain promotion back to the Premier League after his takeover and Milne admits errors have been made along the way, perhaps most notably the managerial appointments of Roy Keane and Paul Jewell.
"There must have been mistakes made if you haven’t gone up to the Premier League,” he added. "But there are a lot of other clubs who have spent a lot more money and haven’t gone up. At Derby, [owner] Mel Morris gets very frustrated with the money he’s spent on it recently and not gone up.
"It is tough, we’ve got a great manager, it’s getting in the right mixture of players, I’ve got Luke Chambers with me here, who is a great captain.
"But it is a mixture of things and, OK, you make your own luck by getting the right manager and right players, but there is also an element of luck and things going right with injuries and the rest of it. So it’s a mixture. But that’s football.”
Town are currently seventh, three points off the play-offs and Milne says the club’s frontmen have been the major factor in this season’s upturn with the Blues the second top scorers in the division on 35 behind leaders Wolves, who have scored 40.
"I think the strikers have made the big difference this season and long may it continue,” he said. "Joe Garner’s [out at the moment], David McGoldrick is going to be out for a few weeks but we do have the strike force now.”
Regarding McGoldrick, Milne says there are yet to be talks regarding the Ireland international’s contract, which is up at the end of the season.
"No, there haven’t been,” he added. "We’ll look at it during the transfer [window] and see where it goes from there.”
You can hear Milne and skipper Chambers speaking to Life's a Pitch here (from 1hr 29mins).