| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans 14:20 - Mar 26 with 3104 views | Cheltenham_Blue |
I just for the life of me, can't wrap my head around the easy ride that Evans gets from a big proportion of our fan base.
Yes, be bought us at a point that we were in a bad place, but do people really think he did that out of the goodness of his heart and therefore we should remain grateful to him ad infinitum?
He did what all successful businessmen do, he saw a well known brand in financial trouble, bought it at a knocked down price, buying out the debt from Norwich Union at a very favourable discount and took a business risk on the basis that, with a little investment that it would soon turn a profit and he could sell it on again.
How was he to know that Roy Keane was a megalomaniac that players would eventually not really want to play for? Well, the name 'Roy Keane' might have been the first clue of that.
People often cite that, "if it hadn't been for Evans, no one was buying us and we'd have gone out of business."
I think this rhetoric really needs to be corrected, because people were buying clubs at the time, lets not forget, Gould and Sullivan were sniffing around us, but they were run out of Town by Sheppy, and a large number of the fan base on the basis they were 'porn kings', in favour of a man who even then, was described as 'The worlds biggest ticket tout'. Odd.
We have no idea who else was seriously considering buying us, back then, we were a big name outside of the Premier League, probably one of the biggest, We literally didn't know about Evans until the deal was virtually done, so this idea that no one would have come in after Evans did, is frankly, fanciful.
Then we move on to the fact that Evans puts in £4-£7million per year to cover our losses, which is often framed by some on this forum, and in the stands as some kind of 'miracle'. Great.
Except its not really a miracle, or amazing is it?
In our relegation year alone, and this pattern is repeated every year of Evans tenure, by the way. Town operated on a loss of £8m. 11 (Eleven) other clubs, lost significantly more money that Town that year, and only 3 clubs reported a profit, mainly driven by parachute payments and player sales.
Of course, those losses were covered by the respective owners of those clubs. Marcus Evans is not unique in covering a football clubs losses, (although he is often treated as though he is), every football club owner does it; because they have to unless they are frankly bonkers like the Olson's, at the end of it all, that's exactly what they commit to when they buy a club, and they go in with a full awareness of that fact.
However, the bit you do have to factor in with Ipswich, despite having one of the largest grounds (by capacity) and one of the largest fan bases (by attendance) in the league, we were operating on the joint 3rd lowest wage budget in the Championship, equal with Wigan on £19m, and having just Millwall (£17m) and Rotherham (£8m) below us in terms of wages.
Despite our stadium size and our fan base, our revenue in 18/19 was just £18m, a figure dwarfed by that of some clubs, and the 6th lowest club revenue in the Championship. It makes you wonder, in ten years, what exactly did Evans do to ever make us more sustainable, other than to financially cut corners?
People will point to parachute payments in the Championship, but our revenue at £18m, was significantly lower than Notts Forest (£24m), Birmingham City (£24m) and Bristol City (£30m)
I may not know much, but I do know this. Marcus Evans has watched from the Cayman Islands whilst his club, our club has sunk out of sight and finally appointing the correct manager years too late, should not get him a free pass. He needs to decide if he can actually be a football club owner or not.
If he isn't selling the club, fine, but he has to do better, much better. Many on here are saying that the takeover disappearing could be a good thing, and we are better off sticking with Evans.
To my mind Evans is as dangerous as all those other bad owners we are so lucky to have avoided.
I'll get my coat. |  |
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| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans on 10:19 - Mar 27 with 273 views | jas0999 |
We have an average league on club because of him. We have sold our better players. The budget for replacements reduced and resulted in cheaper, lower quality being brought in.
During Hursts short tenure, he allowed fees OR wages. Madness. We spent on fees but the wage budget only attracted league one or two players. Evans has got it so horribly wrong throughout the years. |  | | |
| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans on 10:48 - Mar 27 with 251 views | TieDyedIn95 |
| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans on 22:57 - Mar 26 by HARRY10 |
One of the constant bleats is how Evans 'pumps money into the club' - like it is some sort of extra help to cope with an external cost.
He is running the club so any imbalance of expenditure over income is caused by him, and him alone. Why should we be grateful for that ?
It is not as if this money has achieved anything, as we have slid lower and lower, with a squad seen as weaker by the season and a ground that like wise suffers as the years pass.
How come others clubs far smaller than us are performing better without having run up nigh on £100 million of debt ? How come we can lose to a club like Fleetwood, which has a population the same size as Felixstowe.
Coughing up whatever amount it is, does not indicate unfettered benevolence, but a level of incompetence whereby our club is not being run within its means, nor achieving even a modest level of success, |
The problem is Evans can afford to own Ipswich Town but he cannot afford to progress Ipswich Town. He's seen what other clubs have been doing and decided to go the other way, and it backfired massively. Typically in an industry where 99% of your competition do things a certain way, more so the successful businesses, to do the exact opposite of that usually results in failure - which it has with Evans here. We kept cutting until we had one of the lowest budgets in the Championship and dropped. We refused to compete. Now even if we went up we'd go straight back down because he's just not going to spend the kind of money a club needs to be in the Championship. |  |
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| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans on 10:58 - Mar 27 with 244 views | PhilTWTD |
| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans on 22:57 - Mar 26 by HARRY10 |
One of the constant bleats is how Evans 'pumps money into the club' - like it is some sort of extra help to cope with an external cost.
He is running the club so any imbalance of expenditure over income is caused by him, and him alone. Why should we be grateful for that ?
It is not as if this money has achieved anything, as we have slid lower and lower, with a squad seen as weaker by the season and a ground that like wise suffers as the years pass.
How come others clubs far smaller than us are performing better without having run up nigh on £100 million of debt ? How come we can lose to a club like Fleetwood, which has a population the same size as Felixstowe.
Coughing up whatever amount it is, does not indicate unfettered benevolence, but a level of incompetence whereby our club is not being run within its means, nor achieving even a modest level of success, |
Whether ME has done a good job or otherwise here, and I think it's pretty clear he hasn't, the "imbalance of expenditure over income" is not caused by him but wider factors, certainly in the Championship. If Town had sought to be run within its means it would have been relegated many years before it was.
If we'd been run within our means our wage bill would have been several million pounds lower every season and the quality of player we could attract reduced as a result. |  | | |
| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans on 11:20 - Mar 27 with 219 views | The_Romford_Blue |
Well said.
Good to see TWTD has turned into the Evans Out camp too. A post like this 4 or 5 years ago from myself often received 10+ down arrows. It’s time for change because now we’re a standard league 1 club as I predicted back then because of Evans. Five more years and we will be a standard league 2 club. |  |
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| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans on 14:41 - Mar 27 with 177 views | Cheltenham_Blue |
| Just to follow up on the thing about Evans on 11:20 - Mar 27 by The_Romford_Blue |
Well said.
Good to see TWTD has turned into the Evans Out camp too. A post like this 4 or 5 years ago from myself often received 10+ down arrows. It’s time for change because now we’re a standard league 1 club as I predicted back then because of Evans. Five more years and we will be a standard league 2 club. |
Yep. Me too.
4-5 or even 8 years ago it felt like their was only a couple of us seeing through Evans, and in particular his prepared statements. Hopefully more of us are waking up to it, but will it make any difference when we are back in the ground?
I hope so, but I very much doubt it. I've seen far too many occasions when the furthest fans will go against Evans, is a loud 'tut' and an angry eye roll. | |
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