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Keeping It in Perspective
Written by JollyJourno on Wednesday, 5th Oct 2016 12:07

Being an Ipswich Town fan has become somewhat of a chore, our current goalless (and joyless) run testing the patience of even the most dedicated fan. Thinking of a way to cheer everyone up, I had the idea to wallow in the failure of other clubs instead!

While Town have been out of the Premier League now for nearly 15 years, we are certainly not the only club to have suffered for so long.

This is an age where 'unfashionable' clubs such as Swansea, Bournemouth and Hull can mix it with the big boys, while former giants of the game such as Aston Villa and Newcastle battle away to regain former glories. Ipswich are themselves former English league, FA Cup, and UEFA Cup winners, but as we well know, past history is no gauge to current success.

In choosing five other failing Championship teams to compare us with, I've gone for clubs with a similar sized fan base and rich history; all of them are past league champions.

Nottingham Forest
Years out of Premier League: 18
Honours: 1x English champs, 2x European champs, 2x FA Cup, 4x League Cup
Current position: 18th

Forest are one of the most decorated teams in English football history, and one of only five to have also been crowned European champions.

But they've been outside the Premier League now for nearly two decades and show no sign of returning anytime soon. Recent history has also seen them spend three seasons in the third tier.

Since a return to the Championship in 2008, Forest have rarely challenged for promotion. Their best year was 2010 when they finished third, while there was also a play-off campaign in 2011.

In 2012 Forest were taken over the Al-Hasawi family, from Kuwait. But their ownership got off to a rocky start when they sacked popular manager Sean O'Driscoll just five months after they hired him, and with Forest one point of the play-offs.

His replacement, Alex McLeish, spent 40 days in charge before being sacked. Billy Davies was then re-hired, a year the Al-Hasawis dismissed him.

Forest now find themselves seemingly stuck in a yearly routine of sacking managers and finishing mid-table. The team currently lie 19th, with new boss Philippe Montanier looking a likely bet for the axe.

Verdict: Still no sign that Forest can end exile.

Wolverhampton Wanderers
Years out of Premier League: 5
Honours: 3x English champs, 4x FA Cup, 2x League Cup
Current position: 12th

Wolves have never fulfilled their potential in the Premier League, having been relegated in their first season in 2003/04 and, under Mick McCarthy, battling relegation for three successive years before finally succumbing after his departure in 2012. Further woe was to come, with relegation to the second tier coming just 12 months later.

Manager Kenny Jackett restored some pride in 2014, leading Wolves back to the Championship in one season with a division title and record points haul. Jackett led the Molineux club to seventh in 2015, before slipping to 14th in 2016.

This past summer saw Chinese conglomerate Fosun International buy Wolves and, four days after new director Jeff Shi said he was "happy to work with Jackett", sacked him and hired Italian Walter Zenga in his place.

Verdict: Uncertain times ahead under new owners.

Sheffield Wednesday
Years out of Premier League: 17
Honours: 4x English champs, 3x FA Cup, 1x League Cup
Current position: 9th

Few teams have suffered more since relegation from the Premier League than Wednesday. The four-times English champions have endured not one but two ignominious spells in the third tier. The Hillsborough club hit their ultimate low point in 2010, when they faced a series of winding-up orders for unpaid tax and finished in the bottom half of League One.

Better times arrived under the ownership of Milan Mandaric, with Wednesday winning promotion back to the Championship in 2012. His time in the boardroom was short-lived, however, with Thai businessman Dejphon Chansiri buying the club in 2014.

Wednesday now seem headed in the right direction at last, with the team coming within 90 minutes of the Premier League last season under the management of Carlos Carvalhal, and starting well again this campaign.

Verdict: Darkest days are over, but success still eludes.

Leeds United
Years out of Premier League: 13
Honours: 3x English champs, 1x FA Cup, 1x League Cup,
Current position: 11th

Where to start with Leeds United? The first of a seemingly never-ending string of catastrophes came in 2004, with financial collapse and relegation from the Premier League. The club's stadium and training ground were sold, not to mention nearly all their players, before saviour Ken Bates bought the club.

A run to the play-off final in 2006 was a false dawn, however, with relegation following just a year later under the management of Dennis Wise. Cue catastrophe two: administration, and a 15-point deduction for the start of Leeds' first season in the third tier.

United spent three seasons in League One, finally returning to the Championship in 2010. Two years later, Middle East company GFH Capital bought the club from Ken Bates. But success on the pitch still eluded Leeds, as they narrowly avoid relegation under Neil Warnock.

In 2014 Italian Maasimo Cellino swooped in to buy the club - and attempted to sack manager Brian McDermott before the deal had even gone through. Cellino's ownership has been mired by legal wrangles, court cases, manager sacking, and failure on the pitch. An attempt by Leeds fans to buy the club in 2015 was unsuccessful, and the off-pitch turbulence continues.

Verdict: Utter, utter, shambles.

Derby County
Years out of Premier League: 9
Honours: 2x English champs, 1x FA Cup,
Current position: 20th

Derby's post-Premier League fate closely mirrored Ipswich's for a time. They were relegated the same year, 2002, and put in administration.

In 2006 a consortium led by Peter Gadsby bought the club. Success briefly followed, and Derby returned to the Premier League in 2007 under the management of Billy Davies.

But the club won just a single game and were relegated by March, now under Paul Jewell. The troubled season also saw investment group General Sports and Entertainment buy the club.

Jewell was unable to revive Derby, but a period of stability under Nigel Clough saw them return to the top-half of the table, before he was sacked in 2013.

Steve McClaren continued Derby's upward trend, starting a run of seasons in which Derby would flirt with, but fail to win, promotion.

McClaren's play-off failure in 2014 was repeated in 2016, under Darren Wassall, Paul Clement having started the season as manager before being sacked in February.

New manager Nigel Pearson, who only took over in the summer, has now been suspended by chairman Mel Morris with the club languishing near the relegation zone.

Verdict: Repeated failures to win promotion proving costly.

Ipswich Town
Years out of Premier League: 15
Honours: 1x English champs, 1x FA Cup, 1x UEFA Cup
Current position: 16th

Stable ownership. Long-serving manager. Mid-table. Our recent history no longer seems so chequered, eh?




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Smithy added 12:32 - Oct 5
Don't think the current issues are really down to the results alone, but more with the style and attitude towards matches. If we were to go to the games and enjoy it win lose or draw the majority of fans would be somewhat satisfied. However the constant boring fare that is served up has now become too much and until the negative, defensive and clueless tactics are removed little is likely to change. The fact that the owner gives no insight to what his plans and future for the club are, doesn't help either, we the fans see little hope of improvement both on or off the pitch, or at least are not advised of anything encouraging. The club, owner and management need to listen and show more respect to the fans who are dwindling away more and more as each week passes.
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MedwayTractor added 12:44 - Oct 5
Food for thought, but as much as it pains me to say this, all of your comparison clubs have the potential to become permanent members of the top tier, but I'm not sure the same can be said of us. They have vastly superior potential fan bases, being based in major population centres, and a greater depth of history in the game. In the case of all but Derby they have better trophy collections, albeit somewhat historic, but then ours is looking like that now.

These clubs might be defined as sleeping giants who have fallen on hard times, definitely punching below their weight. I would add Pompey to the list, possibly Sheffield Utd as well, with Newcastle and Villa as possible additions, depending on their ability to get out of the Championship sooner rather than later.

I'm sure other posters will disagree, please let us know!
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JollyJourno added 13:01 - Oct 5
I agree that Ipswich are probably smaller in stature than most if not all the clubs I've compared us with, but I often point out to people that the Tractor Boys represent more than just one town. This football club is basically a representative team for the whole of Suffolk - which boasts a population of 700,000 and is therefore bigger than most cities in this country. Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday actually have to compete for fan support with their city rivals Notts County and Sheffield United. We have no such constraint.
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CaptainObvious added 13:04 - Oct 5
As a fan of the club, why would you think like this? I just cannot comprehend that mentality of accepting the situation by simply finding clubs that are worse off. The day i started thinking like that is the day i would give up.
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rickw added 13:14 - Oct 5
Your comment on Wolves about "uncertain times ahead" made me think about think about a rich foreign owner taking over (as in Wolves or Shef Wed) as I think most fans would settle for uncertain over what we have at the moment - boring!

You are right we are a football team for the whole of Suffolk, but I think most foreign investors wouldn't realise that and look to get a team from a City.
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Gogs added 13:47 - Oct 5
All valid points, but 1) I don't really care about those other clubs and 2) it doesn't alter the fact that it's a boring load of old rubbish at PR at the moment and we're certainly not going forward at present, on or off the pitch. I find nothing cheerful at all in our predicament nor in that of those other clubs.
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DurhamTownFan added 18:16 - Oct 5
I don't care what other clubs are doing. Are you seriously trying to argue that we should be grateful for what we have? Have some ambition, man! If don't then who will? Certainly not the owner nor the manager...
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GFH added 19:44 - Oct 5
I respect what you have written and I know you are just trying to give us some sort of consolidation to the position we find our club in at the moment. However I do agree with most other peoples stance that something has to change, IF we go for a change of manager who would it be? I would like to see a young hungry manager wanting success to come in but who? and if we do have a change I cant see it being any better with Marcus Evans holding the purse strings. I sincerely hope for a positive change in the clubs fortunes soon because we are going to be looking at a relegation fight instead of a promotion battle very soon if we continue with our current trend.
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Penguinblue added 20:22 - Oct 5
in this context the problem at Ipswich now (forget 4 years ago) is the long serving manager.
His 'style' of football is horrendous, his selections and 'tactics' based on favouritism and nonsensical decisions which leave some of us thinking he deliberately sets out to clip the wings of anyone who shows any flair.
His public utterances are tedious, repetitive, always with underlying excuses about how hard the opposition (often far more lowly clubs than Ipswich) are, or how much they have spent. He is contemptuous of fans if they criticise.
There seems to be no-one at Ipswich to take him to task, owner, managing director or senior players, even us loyal fans suffer and applaud the rare pass rather than calling for the end of this sad part of our history.
Ipswich once had a reputation for good football. This has been totally lost under McCarthy.
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ronnyd added 21:30 - Oct 5
I found this was a good read, but, i must agree with most of the posters on here that it,s our club we are concerned about not other fans clubs.
3

Edmundo added 22:55 - Oct 5
I'd go for a change of owner, manager and excitement/uncertainty right now. *yawn*
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JollyJourno added 23:06 - Oct 5
Thanks for the comments. When I set out to write this blog, I just wanted to stop thinking about Ipswich's problems for a while and look a bit deeper into what other clubs are going through. It's a useful process to better understand our own predicament.

What this blog does not intend to do is argue that Mick McCarthy and the rest of the club should be completely absolved of responsibility. My view, as I've said in a previous blog, is that we won't make progress until McCarthy is gone. That said, I still really admire the fact that Ipswich Town is a club that treats all its staff with respect and doesn't rush to fire anyone after a couple of losses. Nor do we have an owner who treats the club like a personal play thing, constantly dragging our name through the mud. So as much as I would question their competency at present, one thing I wouldn't do is accuse McCarthy nor Evans of having contempt or lack of respect for the fans.
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CalneBlue added 13:05 - Oct 6
I liked your blog - interesting and well written. For me, this does reinforce the need for smart football-savvy people running football clubs together with a lot of cash, usually from foreign investors (Bournemouth a good example).

I do, however, have reservations re your last comment in response to others. Seems to me the club is run without much in the way of supporter consultation or communication in general (apart from trying to sell tickets). There are plenty of times where MM has disrespected fans, e.g. selection of poor teams for cup games, refusing to explain team selections, stating he'll move on given opportunity elsewhere, and above all playing awful defensive football at the expense of providing even a modicum of entertainment.
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carsey added 21:10 - Oct 6
Whilst I found it an interesting read I have to agree with those who say they don't care what others are doing I'm only bothered about Ipswich Town FC.
Evans is an enigma and in my view doesn't care about the club or supporters. I know David Sheepshanks made some mistakes but he was a supporter who stood on the terraces at away games and that goes a long way for me.
McCarthy is a dinosaur in footballing terms plus he is disrespectful of Town fans, is arrogant and unlikely to change.
Quite what the answer is I don't know and I doubt anyone does because no one knows the truth about our shady owner.
Do I want McCarthy out? Yes. Do I think it would save our season? Probably. Either way it would be a whole lot more exciting.
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Facefacts added 11:41 - Oct 7
All of this is fine (except the Leeds section), and I understand why you wanted to post it. We are all passionate Ipswich Town fans who don't care about the fate of other clubs. I do like having Norwich City in the same division as us, because those games bring out the passion and pride and (nearly) fill our now sadly over-sized stadium. In the recent derby, perhaps a poor Norwich City team were there for the taking in the second half. Did we not have the strength to play as well in the second half? An ageing Daryl Murphy has now left, which - with no discernible change in tactics - makes us look like a team playing with relegation form. Mick McCarthy was lucky that Murphy had one miraculous season and he was of course now past his best, but he still ably led the line. Mick is now unlucky that Murphy took a pay rise to effectively retire from playing football, and now the same tactics need to work around Leon Best, who is all he could find in the remaining time before the end of the transfer window. Perhaps we can get a run going when Johnny Williams returns to the team. I and every other Ipswich Town supporter want the good times to come back. But any article on an ITFC forum that mentions the Neil Warnock Leeds team which narrowly avoided relegation a few years ago needs to mention one of the issues that I think has shocked me most, in supporting our, yes, great club for 40 years now. I was gladly not at Elland Road that day, so cannot comment in detail. The circumstances of the invading Leeds United mob scared/bullied the referee into disallowing our winning goal and nothing was done about it. We should have been awarded the game, as, if the circumstances are ever repeated, they would do the same again.. I doubt whether even Neil Warnock has ever seen anything like it. Leeds United should have been relegated again to League One that day, and it still annoys me that they weren't. Why did we accept it? A great club would have followed it up when the dust had settled and ensured justice was done. It stank then, and it still stinks now.
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