| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? 18:20 - Jan 10 with 3105 views | BlueMoon |
Where do people see the trough of our (2 decade long) decline ending?
A lot of clubs that hit bad times take their medicine & start a rebuilding process. This clearly doesn't guarantee a turnaround - perhaps no improvement whatsoever, but it feels like you have to try something new when what you have isn't working.
The COVID situation & injuries aren't helping but it certainly feels we haven't yet hit the bottom of our decline.
We have what seems to me to be a shell of club; poor ownership; ineffective coaching; pysios that do more harm than good; terrible first-team squad. Limited prospects all round.
Evans has made this and overseen a continued decline that is now 14 years in the making. His formula is broken. It never worked. Where does he take us from here? Stick with the manger for 4 more years? Change manager again? What will they achieve that the last 4-5 haven't? The problems at the club are bigger than the manger and the resulting prospects only suggest one outcome.
People can say without Evans we'd be finished. At this point, would that actually be any worse than what we currently endure? The damage being done to the club at present is immense. A few years of poor stewardship results in the loss of a few fairweather fans, players moving on etc. A decline of 20 years is a step-change to that. People that have supported the club for a lifetime simply don't care any more. We won't get those people back in a hurry. Younger fans don't care - they don't care about history 30-40 years before they were born. Hardly inspiring stuff.
I post this to guage what others feel. Perhaps I'm way off. At the moment it feels like we're witnessing our transition to a nothing club. We need to do something, as fans, to try and stop that before it is too late. [Post edited 10 Jan 2021 18:47]
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| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 10:32 - Jan 11 with 418 views | Radlett_blue |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 09:48 - Jan 11 by tractorboy1978 |
The team top of the league basically changed their whole squad in the summer. They brought in a mixture of fairly cheap average L1 players, a couple that had played in the lower leagues in other countries and youngsters on loan. That team has been quickly molded to play in the manner the coach wants and they look organised and play with proper patterns of play.
On paper our squad is miles ahead of Lincolns. Yet we STILL play with no identity, look totally disorganised and poorly coached. |
100% this.
Swindon had a rag tag of a team on Saturday, with recalled loan players etc & 5 changes. But they looked well set up & organised.
I think Lambert is a complete fraud as a manager, having failed to win more games than he has lost at all of his 5 clubs after his success at Norwich, which some suggest was more down to Ian Culverhouse, who has now gained 2 successive promotions at King's Lynn. |  |
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| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 10:48 - Jan 11 with 405 views | monty_radio |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 19:20 - Jan 10 by TexacoCup |
Apart from Sunderland there is no bigger club below in the football pyramid - there's something sad about how we've drifted into obscurity. |
Arguably Bolton are on a par, with three F.A. Cup wins and three beaten finalists tags equate, in terms of success to out 3 stars. Our success and therefore relative "bigness" is more recent, but still long enough in the past to render it as irrelevant as Bolton's past glories.
Going further back still some of the 19ct near-invincibles no longer even exist - a demonstration, if we needed one, that the past guarantees nothing in the future. | |
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| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 10:53 - Jan 11 with 401 views | CrayonKing |
Sadly I think we can fall further still. Doesn't seem likely that we'll go up this year and the salary cap will put all clubs in this division on a much more even footing.
When nobody has a financial advantage then success comes down to which clubs are run the best and coached the best. That doesn't exactly fill me with optimism! |  | | |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 10:57 - Jan 11 with 390 views | HighgateBlue |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 20:12 - Jan 10 by Swansea_Blue |
I can't see us having a turnaround under Evans, sadly. So I expect we'll reach rock bottom the day before he finally moves on. Quite what state we'll be in by the god knows; depends on how much longer he has to keep getting things wrong.
Edit - or rock bottom could be after he leaves if he screws up selling us on, which is likely given his efforts so far. [Post edited 10 Jan 2021 20:13]
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Evans owns the club and injects millions a year. Whatever his motivation, that is undeniable.
The notion that we must "get rid" of Evans come what may is a ridiculous one. The one way to do that is for him to sell on. We don't know who's interested, how incompetent, unscrupulous and ultimately insolvent they might be.
The idea that we can force Evans out, saying that he's the worst thing that's ever happened to the Club, and in the same breath oblige him to sell to a saintly consortium for 1p is ludicrous. If we say we don't want him, and he sells up, he'll have made a huge loss by putting money into our club, and his obligation ends there. The next owner will be responsible for its tenure just as Evans is for his (and yes, he's made some decisions that with hindsight were awful, and also some that appeared awful at the time).
But you cannot say that a new owner will be better than Evans and then blame Evans if the new owner is worse. |  | | |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 11:18 - Jan 11 with 370 views | PrideOfTheEast |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 10:32 - Jan 11 by Radlett_blue |
100% this.
Swindon had a rag tag of a team on Saturday, with recalled loan players etc & 5 changes. But they looked well set up & organised.
I think Lambert is a complete fraud as a manager, having failed to win more games than he has lost at all of his 5 clubs after his success at Norwich, which some suggest was more down to Ian Culverhouse, who has now gained 2 successive promotions at King's Lynn. |
Agreed.
I just don't get what ME sees in him. The players clearly don't like him, the fans don't like him, he's not delivering, he's expensive relative to probably every other manager at this level, he's ex Norwich...... the list could go on I'm sure.
I said right at the start of his reign when he was doing his PR stunt that short-term this is all fine, and would have been fine if he'd kept us up, but the downside would be much worse than we've seen before. He gave the fan base hope and has delivered nothing. So we're two steps back from where we started. | | | |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 11:19 - Jan 11 with 368 views | SomethingBlue |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 10:53 - Jan 11 by CrayonKing |
Sadly I think we can fall further still. Doesn't seem likely that we'll go up this year and the salary cap will put all clubs in this division on a much more even footing.
When nobody has a financial advantage then success comes down to which clubs are run the best and coached the best. That doesn't exactly fill me with optimism! |
This is correct. Given that we are one of the least smart clubs in the Football League — something I don't say lightly — there is a lot further to fall if we mess this season up. | |
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| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 12:25 - Jan 11 with 312 views | PrideOfTheEast |
| When will ITFC hit rock-bottom? on 10:57 - Jan 11 by HighgateBlue |
Evans owns the club and injects millions a year. Whatever his motivation, that is undeniable.
The notion that we must "get rid" of Evans come what may is a ridiculous one. The one way to do that is for him to sell on. We don't know who's interested, how incompetent, unscrupulous and ultimately insolvent they might be.
The idea that we can force Evans out, saying that he's the worst thing that's ever happened to the Club, and in the same breath oblige him to sell to a saintly consortium for 1p is ludicrous. If we say we don't want him, and he sells up, he'll have made a huge loss by putting money into our club, and his obligation ends there. The next owner will be responsible for its tenure just as Evans is for his (and yes, he's made some decisions that with hindsight were awful, and also some that appeared awful at the time).
But you cannot say that a new owner will be better than Evans and then blame Evans if the new owner is worse. |
Completely agree with all of that.
It's silly that certain people seem to want to question levels of investment. He's putting millions in every year (even more so this year) and getting nothing out. Before somebody starts talking about interest payments on debt - interest hasn't been settled in years.
My issue is that he is demonstrably incapable of making good football related decisions. There must come a point, and I think that point is when we're mid-table in League One and properly subject to the wage cap (so once this existing crop have seen through their contracts). At which point, ITFC with 20k fans in every week (possible if the mood was elevated under a change of owner/manager) would become profitable, or close to it. So if we're not going up with Evans' riches, then what's the point in having that person make bad decision after bad decision. | | | |
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