When I questioned the ownership model and strategy of our club the typical reaction was: we had no choice, we’re on track, shut up, support the team. But it’s a bit like asking someone to keep quiet while a train wreck in slow motion is unfolding. And besides, I am capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

We pay high ticket prices and we have a high debt level but there’s no point in demonising Marcus Evans because this is precisely what we signed up for when we agreed to be taken over. We knew the strategy would be to spend big in the hope of winning quick promotion to the Premier League and if this failed, who knows?

We can forget about the Premier League for the foreseeable future. A good outcome this season will be if we avoid relegation. A good outcome next season will be if we are not involved in a relegation battle. Meanwhile, attendances and the reputation of the club continue to slide.

But it’s hardly the fault of Marcus Evans that Jim Magilton failed as manager and that Roy Keane is doing the same despite the substantial resources he’s had. In terms of what he can control, Marcus Evans cannot be seriously criticised. Off the field the club appears to be run reasonably efficiently (the freeze in prices for next season was a belated recognition that current prices are proving to be a strategic own goal) and, so far at least, he has not ripped any money out.

My issue is with our ownership structure, our status as just another asset in the business portfolio of one man, our strategy of overspending and borrowing and the slow destruction of a club culture that, by and large, served us well.

It is worth making the point that only a few clubs have benefited in the long term from being taken over. Chelsea and Blackburn Rovers are the most obvious examples.

Roman Abramovich loved football and he also wanted to signal his arrival as a billionaire. He was able to kill two birds with one stone by buying a trendy West London football club.

Sir Jack Walker was a Blackburn Rovers fan from boyhood. He had already made his fortune when he poured money into the club and then set up a trust to benefit it beyond his death. He was one of the few genuine benefactors.

Manchester City look like emulating Chelsea thanks to the Abu Dhabi millions thrown at them but it’s still early days in their transformation. Wigan Athletic have reached heights which would have been unimaginable a few years ago due to Dave Whelan’s largesse but they have not been in the Premier League long enough to qualify as a long term success story.

All the cases above were good outcomes but they were not your typical takeover because the investors never set out to make a buck. In your typical takeover, the new owners put in little or no equity and then use financial leverage to increase spending on players in the hope of getting a jump on their rivals.

The owners of the very big clubs spend vast amounts in order to keep qualifying for the Champions League. Those in the next echelon spend big trying to break the monopoly of the top four. Clubs in the middle order and below spend everything they have and more trying to stay in the Premier League. Clubs outside the Premier League, like our club, rack up debt trying to get there. The escalation this creates in player wages and the cost of watching football is clear.

Ipswich Town didn’t have to join this mad scramble. It’s true that when we came out of administration in 2003 we still had a high debt level which we failed to reduce substantially as only £2.5 million was raised in the public issue that took place the following year.

If the supporters of Manchester United, Liverpool or Newcastle United were offered the opportunity to buy a stake in their club there would be a stampede. Unfortunately, the fans of Ipswich Town showed little enthusiasm for the share issue. But that’s just tough luck. A line should have been drawn in the sand there and then. The club should have accepted the financial realities as they were and just got on with it.

Our financial position was not great but we weren’t a basket case either. The financial details for Ipswich Town and other clubs are there for all to see. They clearly show we had relatively healthy matchday and commercial revenues. After deducting club running costs and interest on borrowings, the amount left over for investment in the playing squad was greater than what most Championship clubs had.

It is true we were not competitive against the top Championship clubs given that most of them had the advantage of outside funding (Joe Royle certainly did well to get us to finish as high as we did in 2003/04 and 2004/5). However, the funding advantage other clubs had was a one-off and came with strings attached. We would not have been at a competitive disadvantage forever.

And anyway, is an extended stay in the Championship so abhorrent? I can think of many clubs our size and a few other clubs with more fans and more silverware who would love to have had our darkest period as their worst ever crisis.

Ipswich is a small town and therefore our potential is limited. We had a truly great manager and so we overachieved for a decade up until the early 1980s. Even at the peak of this great era, the term most often applied to us by the media was “unfashionable”. Let’s put it into perspective: if the Bobby Robson era is excluded, the number of seasons spent by Ipswich Town in the top flight comes to a grand total of 13.

We never were and never will be a club automatically associated with top flight football. But we’re not minnows either – we have a strong fan base relative to our catchment area and a respected name in football thanks to the way we were run under the Cobbolds and the success we enjoyed under Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson. Given the vagaries of football, provided we were properly managed on and off the field, we would have our moments in the sun, even as a stand-alone entity.

I’ve said before that I don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t say what will happen from now on or what would have happened if different decisions had been taken. But neither do those who believe we were doomed and that we should praise the Lord for delivering us Marcus Evans. I like to think I have carried out some kind of analysis and that there is a reasonable basis for my view. Have the others done the same or have they just parroted what they’ve heard and read?

The ink on the share certificates issued to fans who had subscribed to the public issue had barely dried when the board, under pressure from fans, changed tack and entered the club in a beauty parade in the hope of attracting a wealthy buyer who would buy us a place in the Premiership. In this quest we’ve become yet another club which has joined the culture of excess.

We have the appearance of one of the more stable clubs but the reality is we have a £48 million debt that is growing by the day and we can’t pretend it’s not there just because it’s intragroup debt. It is almost certain we’re going to have to pay the piper, whether it is Marcus Evans or whoever he might decide to flip the club to.

You could argue it’s still early days and that we should just wait and see how it all turns out. Marcus Evans might decide never to charge a penny in interest on the huge debt the club owes him. He could do what Roman Abramovich did at Chelsea or Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan at Manchester City and write off the debt completely. He might decide never to flip the club over to another businessman thus saving us from having an owner we might loathe.

You could speculate until the cows come home on whether Marcus Evans has the inclination and the deep pockets to keep running Ipswich Town as some kind of loss-making subsidiary or hobby. But all this misses the point. The real issue is this: why should a proud club be at the mercy of one man?

Fans spend a lifetime following a club with a certain structure, culture and identity and it all changes in one buyout transaction. What once determined a club’s fortunes used to be largely predictable. Now a major determinant of success or failure is which club a particular millionaire with an ego will decide to throw his money at, which owner who promised big things is found to have done a con job, which owner decides he’s had enough and leaves a club in the lurch after recovering what he can and walking away. Do I want the fortunes of my club and those of rival clubs decided in such an arbitrary manner? No thanks.

The smugness of football fans that accompanies the takeover of their club by businessmen reminds me of the bragging that goes on between juveniles. Two little boys in the prep school yard: “My daddy can lick your daddy”. Football's fans of opposing clubs: “Our millionaire owner has a bigger wallet than your millionaire owner”.

This kind of stupidity characterises football today but thankfully there are some signs the tide is beginning to turn.

Facefacts added 08:25 - Mar 8 Excellent blog: these ownership/management/debt issues are always bubbling under the surface, whether we have just won or lost a match. We are stuck with the current situation, hoping that Roy Keane will be quickly developing into a stronger and better football manager, until Marcus Evans decides to change it. Back when I was a season ticket holder (late 80s to mid 90s), I remember enjoying the Championship years more than the Premier league years, so the point about enjoying being a successful Championship club rather than a struggling Premier league club sounds right to me.

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WarkonWater added 12:12 - Mar 8 Best blog ever on this site. Whether you agree with everything you have to say it had it all: analysis, a feel for the history of our club, passion and humour. We need to read more about the bigger issues facing our club and the game in general rather than being obsessed about the likely line-up for our next fixture. If fans took a wider perspective football wouldn’t be in the mess it is today. I’m really concerned about our future. We have a non-performing manager and team and an owner who took a gamble on winning quick promotion to the Premiership which has backfired and has landed us with a huge debt. How can any reasonable fan claim we are better off than we were before the takeover? Great stuff and let’s see more of it on this site.

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TractorRoyNo1 added 14:02 - Mar 8 It's exactly the same struture as it was under the Cobbold's, its just that the figures are bigger. You guys are playing with fire, if Evans walks becasue he feels unwanted then we are the next Luton Town. "My issue is with our ownership structure, our status as just another asset in the business portfolio of one man."
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FrankfurtBlue added 14:52 - Mar 8 Having read that article, I am left wondering firstly, which is your main gripe and, secondly, why you have written so much but actually said very little. You seem to be moaning variously about ticket prices, debt levels, the current poor league position, the club’s ownership structure (whatever that might mean), the “destruction of club culture” (whatever that might mean), and why “a proud club should be at the mercy of one man”. Fact is, until the ME takeover, ITFC was sinking financially in order to stand still in footballing terms! Bottom line figures prove this. ITFC recorded net losses of £7.8m in 2003, £0.5m in 2004, £3.2m in 2005, and £2.7m in 2006, followed by a small net profit of £174,000 in 2007. How can you argue that we were not very, very deep in the mire financially? These results were made despite successive attempts to raise funds, via the share issues, the agreements with Norwich Union leading to the “shares for interest payments” swap, loans provided by a few of the directors, and significant income and cost reductions secured through player sales. During this period, we signed the likes of George Santos, Kevin Horlock and Darren Curry. Those players gave us a fighting chance in the Championship because of some fine management (many thanks to Joe Royle), but even the wages of that level of player could not be paid from our operational cashflows! You want to contend that ITFC could have continued to tick along financially and still retain Championship status. If that’s your true opinion, what would the player wage (and transfer) budget have had to have been to allow ITFC to continue servicing the debt, forgetting repayments? Would the avoidance of a CCC relegation battle each year really have been possible, if paying peanuts for wages? I, personally, consider that we might have beaten our feathered friends into Div 3! I, too, am unhappy about having an anonymous business man having total power, especially with the risk of him selling us on to whoever, if he gets us to the EPL. I would have preferred true Ipswich fans to have stumped up the necessary and be running the club. They had their chance, but failed to take it. Your argument, no matter how many times you regurgitate it, does not convince me that the directors of ITFC had much choice than to seek an investor, like ME. Considering the lack of reasonable alternatives, I think that they did a fine job of structuring ME’s involvement to make it difficult for him to cut and run.

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MBG added 16:08 - Mar 8 FrankfurtBlue - yes, we were struggling somewhat before Marcus Evans came along but the the 30 mil odd debt that was run up under the old regime was to make Portman Road a decent stadium. At least we have something to show for it unlike a club like Portsmouth who have huge debts and a crappy stadium. I’ve done a few back of the envelope calculations and I agree with the blogger when he says we were still better off than most Championship clubs. The interest on the 30 mil plus debt was about 2.5 mil per year. But virtually every other club also had debts they needed to service even though they might not have been as large as ours. Our average home attendances were at least 5,000 better than most of our competitors plus we had higher commercial income. When you do the sums you quickly realize that we were able to bridge the gap. Since the Marcus Evans takeover we have gone into debt by another 20 mil almost. What have we got to show for this? Have we improved the stadium? Do we have a better team? You say you don’t understand what SanityBlue is talking about when he refers to the destruction of club culture. I know exactly what he’s talking about. We’ve been at our best when we’ve shied away from the big money signings and patiently built up the team. When we’ve ignored those principles we’ve come unstuck. First it was under George Burley after our first successful season in the Premiership where it all went to his head and he bought players like Finidi George, Matteo Sereni and Ulrich Le Pen. The second is under Roy Keane and the clueless Clegg where millions have been squandered on big transfer fees and generous wages, mainly on ex Sunderland and Irish players. Look at the evidence. How have we progressed as a club over the last two years? Big promises were made and what have we actually achieved. If we avoid relegation there’ll be dancing in the streets. This shows how the club I love has sunk. I for one happen to think that questioning things like the ownership of our club and the way it is being run is a good thing because complacency is dangerous.

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NorthStand added 17:25 - Mar 8 We were a midtable Championship team before until a few seasons ago. Shock! Horror! You see, Ipswich Town is a MASSIVE club. You see, we have a God given right to be in the Premier League or worst case scenario be in the top six in the Championship. Anything less demands extreme measures e.g. SELL OFF the club to someone without a history of actually supporting Ipswich Town who promises riches to us country bumpkins beyond our wildest dreams. Spot on, SanityBlue. The reason we’re in deep s**t is because we have unrealistic expectations of a club our size. We’ve sold our soul and for what? I wasn’t a fan of Sheepshanks and some of the people before him but at least they were Ipswich Town through and through, they had been around football a long time and knew what they were doing even though they didn’t always get it right and they were accountable. I liked the comment on “whether Marcus has the inclination and deep pockets to keep running Ipswich Town as some kind of loss making subsidiary or hobby”. The message that seems to be coming through is that ME will not tip any more money in. The gamble was to spend big hoping to get into the Premiership quickly but it hasn’t paid off. From now on Ipswich Town will have to be self sustaining. We got Murphy and Healy in after we farmed out Priskin and Stead. That’s how it’s going to be from now on. No more sugar daddy. If we’re gonna sell our soul we might as well do it for a decent price. Me thinks the fire sale wasn’t worth it.

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rgone added 17:53 - Mar 8 I understand what the author is saying but I wonder if he is Optimistic Dave in disguise - talks sense but loves the sound of his own voice and uses a thousand words when a hundred will do. Just for the record - the financial comments are true but I believe we are still a club that most people would list in their top 20.
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NorthStand added 18:08 - Mar 8 I don’t think the blogger loves the sound of his own voice. I think he has a lot to say about what is wrong with football today and what it’s like to see the club you’ve supported all your life become one man’s possession and lose its status. You can’t express those sorts of things in just a few words. Most of the stuff we read here is written by people who are semi literate. It must be a shock when someone comes along who is not just passionate but also articulate.

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FrankfurtBlue added 19:40 - Mar 8 MBG - please read what I actually wrote. I am not particularly happy that we got to a position that we had to be taken over by ME, and was not particularly thrilled that a non-fan became the major investor. However, I still do not understand how it could have been avoided. You have also helped me understand how it would have been possible. How many CCC clubs had more debt than ITFC in 2006/7, and of these how many had no form of external funding (parachute money or "rich investors")? Figures would be appreciated. BTW, Marcus Stewart and David Johnson were the next 2 in the list of most expensive signings by Burley. They both didn't do too badly for us, did they?

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MBG added 07:26 - Mar 9 FrankfrutBlue - I don’t have the time to do a full financial analysis but you don’t have to do a whole lot of research to realize that the comment in the blog that we weren’t a financial basket case makes sense. We’ve always generated much higher revenues than other Championship clubs. You only have to look at attendances at our opponents grounds. At Blackpool last week there were only 8,634. Other figures are: QPR(10,940), Plymouth(10,875), Barnsley(12,224)…… Even so-called midtable established teams don’t come close to us: Preston(12,087), Bristol City(14,287), Coventry(16,279). Also, commercial income makes up about one half of a club’s turnover and I’m pretty confident in saying that we have a similar advantage on that score as well. When you extrapolate the figures it’s not too hard to see that our relatively high debt would have been covered by our relatively high revenue. The central argument of the blogger is that we still had more resources to invest in the playing squad than what most Championship clubs had. From what I can see, this has more credibility than all those people who jump on the bandwagon and say we were stuffed, we would have ended up like Luton …….blah, blah

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NorthStand added 15:23 - Mar 9 Agree entirely with the post that the debt we ran up under the old board was to make Portman Road a modern stadium and at least we have something to show for it. Portsmouth have run up huge debts and still have awful facilities. Leeds did the same and were forced to sell and lease back theirs. What on earth do our fans expect from a small town club like Ipswich? Do they seriously think we can have a modern stadium, a place in the Premier League and be virtually debt free all at the same time? I think Sanity has something when he says the source of all our problems has been unrealistic expectations and that an extended stay in the Championship is no disgrace for a club our size.

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alfromcol added 17:43 - Mar 9 I wouldn't say Wigan are a club that is bigger than ITFC but they seem to be managing an 'extended stay' in the Premiership, why not us. Look at their attendance figures for a start, if ITFC go by the name of a 'club of our size' where would we consider Wigan to fit in? League 1 - no better.
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NorthStand added 07:14 - Mar 10 This is Wigan’s fifth season in the Premiership – you could hardly call it an extended stay. Besides, they’re entirely dependent on their Chairman, Dave Whelan because they’re just not big enough. Will he continue to keep subsidizing the club? That’s what’s wrong with football today. Too many clubs rely on handouts including Ipswich although we don’t rely on our sugar daddy as much as some other clubs. It’s annoying that s**t clubs like Wigan can make it into the Premier League and w***er clubs like Chelsea can become powerhouses only because some rich individual has decided to shower them with money. If every club relied only on what they pulled in through their football activities it would be a much fairer and interesting competition. That’s what UEFA are trying to do with their financial fair play plan.

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FrankfurtBlue added 11:25 - Mar 10 MGB - you concentrate an awful lot on our income and debt levels and comparisons with other clubs. All well and good, up to a point, but it doesn't tell the whole story, does it? Our P&L has showed that we could not afford our outgoings, i.e. pay the players and service the debt, out of our income levels in any of the seasons from 2003 to 2006. Losses were being recorded, despite the non-payment of interest and repayment holidays on the NU and Barclays debt and repayment holidays on the BoS debt, and also after significant income generated from player sales! Those losses were being financed by share issues, directors' loan notes and the arrangements with our lenders. There were only so many sources of cash available to the club to finance the playing activities: fans, directors, creditors had all made their contributions. Players were being sold and cheaper versions being signed. Under your scenario, i.e. the club could live within in it's means, how would we have paid back any of the debt? How would we have bought any players? What if we didn't get another "Darren Bent" to flog every other season? What if our lenders lost patience , if they hadn't already? What if attendence levels started to fall further? Cutting the player budgets would have helped, but I suspect that even that would not have been enough financially, and then there are the risks of relegation, where the subsequent loss of income would have killed us. Where ITFC is concerned, I dislike the expression "basket case" because it is open to mis-interpretation and evokes unfair emotional reaction. However, if you ask me whether we were in a healthy financial state or likely to be able to attain that status from internally generated funds pre-takeover, I would categorically answer that you would have to be a basket case to think that! The End

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WarkonWater added 13:52 - Mar 10 Interesting exchange between FrankfurtBlue and MBG. Who has the time to do a full reconstruction? Normally when there’s a takeover there’s an independent expert’s report but there was none when ME took control so we’ll never really know. We can only deal with the facts today and you have to say the high expectations when ME took control have not been realized. We have a bigger debt than we had before and are surviving only because ME is choosing not claim interest. It’s a precarious existence. Randy Lerner pumped lots of money into Aston Villa but now he’s charging interest on everything he has put in. There aren’t many free lunches in football. I don’t agree with everything in the blog but I go along with the main point that is being made re the inadequacy of the way football is governed. As he says, success or failure is arbitrary now because anyone can come in and pump up a club and make it more successful than it deserves to be e.g. Wigan, Manchester City. In other cases owners have been guilty of mismanagement or fraud e.g. Leeds United, Portsmouth, Notts County, Chester City……. the list goes on. I for one enjoy reading these types of articles because they’re articulate and look at the big picture. I don’t have much time to go to matches and read what’s put on this site and when I do most of it is ill-informed, semi-literate or downright abusive. I don’t want to read the same old drivel. If there were more articles like this and football fans took a bigger interest in what was happening off the field the game would be in a better state.

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WadzillaBhoy added 20:24 - Mar 10 Great blog dude, at this point in time though with the current financial climate no club is making an real operational profit, hence why the majority of signings made were loans with an option to buy. I think there were only actually 3 real transfers made. Plus Marcus Evans is a business man, I'd rather he run the club than Sheepshanks. Always remember it was Sheepshanks that got us into administration, he had the debt restructured at least twice and we wouldn't have been out of debt till about 2025. The first thing Evans did was to pay off this debt. Any Ipswich town fan would say I wish we still had the Cobbolds at the helm. But unfortunatly we don't but at least we now have a chairman who is willing to put money into the club. It is that sole reason that Im sure we wont be another Portsmouth, we were looking far more precarious under the previous regime. In my opinon we are moving onwards and upwards, but even though we now have a millionaire for a chairman doesn't mean we will get promoted immediatly. If that was the case we'd do as well as Derby did in the prem! A slow progressive build up means we could have long term success like Fulham.

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MyBlueHeaven added 14:27 - Mar 11 will echo some of the other posts... makes a refresher change to read a well written piece on the twtd blog. would question a couple of points... that chelsea with ambrovich's money has been long term. and that there are loads of leveraged buyouts in the prem. mentions the big 4, but as the writer says himself, chelsea wasn't leveraged and nor was arsenal (who are still owned by various board members). anwyay, the blogger asks... The real issue is this: why should a proud club be at the mercy of one man? answer... because we as fans ultimately, sadly, don't care. do we? if we did we'd do something about it. we'd fight harder to stop these takeovers happening. we'd vote with our feet and wallets by not paying £30 and more to see matches or buying plastic market stall merchandise. but, like the lemmings we are, we still go to games. we still buy the poorly made expensive shirts and we still stand idly by as the heart of the club, and that of football, part of our national heritage, is ripped out. lots of comments here, and elsewhere, of doing a 'portsmouth' but this has been coming for years. i'm not the first to say this... but going to portman road these days is not what it once was. and i'm not talking about the results/quality of football but the whole thing. as bill nicholson (i think...) once said of spurs some years back... there used to be a football club there. but as i say, it's our fault. we've allowed this to happen. not just at ipswich but at umpteen clubs up and down the country. and i think we're too far gone to do much about it. what's needed is big sharp shock. let the professional game implode on itself, the dust will settle and we can enjoy going to games for football's sake by watching and following supporter owned/run clubs.

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Nevadablue added 19:26 - Mar 20 There's no question our club's future remains in the balance. Even though we have overcome our immediate day to day financial worries, the fact is that if Marcus Evans tires of spending money with no return, i.e. failing to get promoted, and walks, we will be in an even worse position than before his arrival. Although I now live 5000 miles away from Ipswich, I was born and bred there and was a long term season ticket holder until a couple of seasons ago. It really hurts to see how we have become a pawn in some sort of corporate plan that may, or may not, be to our long term benefit. For me, Ipswich Town was special when it was run by local people for local people. That was a philosophy that served us well for generations and then the wheels came off after we got drunk on the early and, as it proved, unsustainable form of our first year back in the Premiership. The fallout from that is still being felt and, although I have never questioned the sincerity of Mr Sheepshanks, I do wonder if he is regretting how the new regime seems to be sapping the club of the culture that made it so special.

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