If a player looks at Burnley's ground and non existent training facilities and prefers them to us then that fine by me and says a lot about the player.

Obviously money was the factor which is a shame for a young player with years in the game ahead of him and we would not have offered peanuts anyway. His loss not ours and we move on. We all know what a great club we are and unfortunately for Austin he will never know what he has missed out on.

YET AGAIN CLEGG FAILS TO LAND HIS MAN.HE SHOULD GO BACK TO ATHLETICS AS HE CANT CUT IT AS A CHIEF EXECUTIVE.CLEGG OUT ,CLEGG OUT CLEGG OUT

I hope I am wrong, but think this one will come back to haunt us. At 21 and his record, in albeit a lower league, he is a huge prospect and I am very dissapointed another chamionship club can better our offer! If it is true and Clegg cannot seem to get these players in, then this part of his job seriously needs to be looked at.

"get over it"?

how many times do we have to "get over it". This is not a 1 off. We can't offer agreeable contracts to our best players so risk loosing them for nothing, be we can pay a sick note 20k a week until summer. Going back we have the Derry mess and even going back to the Priskin deal the way we agreed a fee even amused those at Watford.

Offer the man a decent wage and we would have bagged him! id consider the reported £12k a week decent for someone coming UP the leagues...... not a proven top flight player yet..... he might be a dean bowditch....... hes gone for cash, typical mercenary.....

Clegg couldn't tie up his own shoelaces let alone tie up a deal! A top quality striker, would be perfect in our team and he goes to Burnley. I think that says it all.

Simon Clegg somehow managed to make Burnley look like an attractive offer?!

Wonder how PJ feels about this? He'd better get used to it, as Austin is hardly the first player we have got through the door only to turn down personal terms.

Time for SC and ME to get real if they truly have Prem ambitions, otherwise we'll just have to put up with being second rate.

A great club that is losing money like water down a drain and has not had a manager worthy of the name for years, possibly until now, cannot compete with ex prem lge clubs with high wage budgets. It will take years of careful management to get this mess sorted out.

The answer is simple, Simon Clegg. Talk to anyone VERY CLOSE to the club and they'll tell you that Clegg has a different approach when it come to meeting and greeting potential players.

Unwelcoming, distant, not what you'd normally expect, not convincing, awkward

... and all from a nice friendly East Anglian club.

I think Mr SC would be better of running the Muppet Show! I guess he'd fail to resign Kermit, get in some old Bull'Toad and go cheap on the Strings !!

Oh Dear.

Smithy they must have done for Bullard as we are allegedly paying £22.5 k a week far more than any other player at the club i bet I think he would ahve been a very very good signing just like Kevin Phillips nearly was for us

BlooooCD you're right. Oly(mpics) Clegg was appointed for reasons beyond football and knows little about running a business - he was in charge of a monopoly before this job - the Olympic Organising Committee is a club where knowledge and skill is nothing, but greasing palms is everything. Judge the CEO by his businesses performance - since Oly has been in post we have slipped down the table. Oly out, Oly out, oi, oi, oi

Flounce

''I am not sure how we can afford Bullards wage demands and not his - a young brught prospect''

bullards = 20 weeks @ 25k p.w. = £500k
lee martin = 4 yrs plus fee = £4.2m
Austin = 3.5 yrs plus fee = £4.2m

im guessing we have an upper limit on wages of £12k p.w. for permanent signings, and an upper deal limit throughout the contract value of £4.2m

which i dont think is a 'poor wage' or whatever it is. If we went to £20k for him and he was another Lee martin, we'd pretty much be screwed, 3 or 4 of those deals could take a club into admin...... lets be real people.......

Ooo the joys of being a f*****g Ipswich supporter!

We have a wage structure in place and if the player (or more likely his agent) was after unrealistic money then fair play to SC.
Hope we promote at their expense next season!
Oh and hope you enjoy the sh*tehole that is Burnley.

rosseden, are you Clegg's personal adviser? Is that why we seldom land any decent signings?? As I said, you sometime have to pay a premium to get the better players (or players with great potential) cos if they are any good, they will sure as hell have plenty of other offers.

Austin had a good opportunity to move closer to home and get a good wage with a team with good potential.

At least he wasnt a replacement for Wickham! Give the club some credit there for extending a contract of a player thats actually wants to play for us rather than look to cash in! Wickham is like a new striker (he wasnt fit up till recently). We still have Priskin, Scotland and Murray (give this lad a fair crack!!) with Bullard supplying the ammo.

Its still been a good few weeks!

ABSOLUTELY CLASSIC! Austin you legend!

I agree wholeheatredly with BLooooCD and Casanovacrow

Clegg is totally clueless and the sooner he resigns the better.

To all those that are saying we need to stick within a wage structure and Austin is a money grabber. That may well be true and if it is we did indeed dogde a bullett but if we look at all the players that the moron Clegg has failed to sign or agree new contracts for are they all just in it for the money and asking to much.

I for one am seeing a pattern

Target Identified
Manager sells the club
player is keen to join
passed onto Clegg
Deal messed up
player signs for a rival club

If that isnt rank incompitence i dont know what is and how Clegg and cash his pay check with out feeling guilty I will never know

The man is a plank and needs to leave NOW and give our club back to someone who understands football and our club and who knows how to negotiate a contract

If we still can't sign decent players I can't see how getting rid of Keane and getting in Jewell is the single solution.

I would be more upset if it was Bullard and the Luton player that we failed to secure. I believe building our midfield is more important than the strikers. I like our strikers!

Football's a murky business and if Simon Clegg and Marcus Evans aren't signing players because they won't pander to the ludicrous demands of players and agents then I applaud them for it.

Burnley..........what a loser. If Austin wants to play boring football for the rest of the season, let him. But having said that, we must be doing something wrong and the finger does point firmly at Clegg and Evans

I think people on here are being rediculously harsh towards Clegg, without knowing the facts of Austin's choice - clearly, a deal could break down for a number of reasons. Furthermore, if the presumption about him wanting more money than we were prepared to offer, is in fact correct, then surely Clegg should be praised and not slated. As a club, I'm confident we pay decent wages, I would guess well above the average in our division. It would be suicidal to spend outside our means, as once started, this always spirals out of control.

I was born in Burnley, and moved away when I was 5, been back once, its a drab, dim and unforgiving place, none of the players that play for Burnley actually live there, they all have there pads in Manchester and Chesire. Hence why he has gone there. Close to big clubs!