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Ashton: Geographically We Can Go into Areas That Might Be Green and Yellow Right Now - Ipswich Town News

Blues CEO Mark Ashton says Town’s community work could eventually push into areas “that might be green and yellow right now, but might become blue again”.

In recent years there has been criticism that the Blues have been behind other professional clubs in the region, including Norwich City, when it comes to work in the community, however, with a new Community Trust having been instigated in September 2019, the previous Charitable Trust having been disbanded six years earlier, Town have started to re-establish itself on that front over the last couple of years.

Ashton says community will be a crucial aspect on which the future of the club will be built going forward, although he admits the focus has been very much on one area in his first two months at Portman Road.

"I think what we’d like to do is get through to the end of August and the transfer window because all my time and energy is in that,” he said at last night’s PLC EGM.

"I feel like I’ve been neglecting other parts of the business and staff at the moment, if I’m honest, because every second of every day is focused on the players.

"But once we get past that we will look at how we will structure the whole business. In fairness, [chairman] Mike [O’Leary] and I have talked about this before.

"I have a plan on how I operate and run football clubs and it’s based on four pillars, four pillars that have to be built in tandem and built strongly because they are the bedrock of the football club moving forward.

"The first pillar is the football department, and that’s the first team, the U23s, the academy, recruitment, performance, analysis, all of the ingredients that go into making the first team win on a Saturday.

"The second element is the commercial revenue part of the football club, which we need to drive. A gentleman earlier mentioned the financial protocols that we have to hit. It’s really simple in League One, we can spend 60 per cent of our revenue on players, so the more revenue we get, the more things we sell, the more we can spend.

"The third element is operations and that’s our facilities and our home. And we know we’ve got to invest and we’ve got to spend some time bringing Portman Road back to the standard that it should be.

"And the fourth element, for me, other than winning on a Saturday, is the most important element, and that’s community because community wraps around everything we do.

"I’m sure in a year’s time you’re going to be fed up of me saying this but I will be repetitive and I’ll come back to community, community, community again because I think for whatever reason, and I’m just learning about the history of the club, the old trust was closed down here.

"We have a new trust which has come back and is in its infancy. If you look at my record at other football clubs that I’ve been at historically, we run big community trusts that use the medium of football to motivate and engage our local community, and that again will wrap around everything that we do.

"And to answer your question, the more we do, the more we can spread out, the more areas we can go into. Geographically we can go into areas that might be green and yellow right now, but might become blue again.

"We’ve got to take the club into new areas because we’ve got to develop the next generation of supporters, it’s absolutely key to us.”

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