McCarthy Given Warm Welcome at AGM Wednesday, 12th Dec 2012 02:12 Mick McCarthy was given a warm welcome by shareholders at Town’s PLC AGM in the Sir Bobby Robson Suite last night. The PLC owns 12.5% of the club and has 3,790 shareholders, although only 100 or so were present at the meeting. Proceedings were opened by new PLC chairman Roger Finbow, who was joined on the top table by McCarthy, John Kerr, Richard Moore, Elizabeth Edwards and Town’s financial controller Mark Andrews, the PLC’s company secretary. Apologies were sent by current PLC board members Martin Pitcher and Philip Hope-Cobbold, while David Sheepshanks, who left the board when he stood down as the PLC’s chairman in April, was also unable to attend due to his commitments at St George’s Park but sent a message of support to new manager McCarthy. Finbow paid tribute to Sheepshanks’s work as chairman of the club and welcomed McCarthy, wishing him well for the future. He also assured shareholders that McCarthy, Simon Clegg, the staff, players and Marcus Evans are all just as proud of Town’s reputation and the traditions that make it a unique club as they are. Simon Clegg then made a speech on the big issues which he feels are currently facing the club off the pitch. Town’s failure to turn Marcus Evans’s investment into success on the field, coupled with the general economic situation hasn’t helped the financial situation of the club, he said. The Blues have had to absorb increasing costs while they have held season ticket and matchday prices. Season ticket sales were down 3% for this season from 12,719 to 12,286, while there has been a 7.5% reduction in average gate numbers so far this season compared with this time last year — 16,816 up to Saturday against 18,195 a year ago. However, Town aren’t alone in being in that position and remain in 12th in the division’s attendance table, where they were at the end of 2011/12. Clegg moved on to the Financial Fair Play (FFP) break-even model, which he said would impact on all Championship clubs — particularly those without parachute payments - once sanctions are introduced when teams transgress the rules next season. He believes all clubs face a challenge as a result of the reduction of gate income and other financial constraints and that it will be very hard for many of them to break even. Clegg moved on to the academy and the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which was introduced in the summer, Town having been amongst the Football League clubs to vote against it. He said he was delighted to bring Bryan Klug back to the club as the academy director. He said implementing the EPPP has been a significant piece of work for Klug and his staff. The requirements have meant that the academy has had to employ a lot more staff and improve its facilities with a portacabin - housing a parents’ lounge, two classrooms and a performance analysis suite - recently having been sited behind the main academy building at Playford Road. Clegg, who believes the club was right to go for Category Two status, says that due to the EPPP’s requirements, the academy now employs staff where equivalents are not in place at first-team level. Last week the academy finished a four-day audit by independent standards inspectors, who looked at every aspect of the Blues’ youth set-up, including all 272 pages of the coaching manual, 168 pages of the performance plan and nearly 200 operational documents. They interviewed Clegg himself, the manager, all the staff, individual academy players and even their parents to make sure that everyone understood the way the new system should work. The chief executive continues to believe that the academy has a very important place in the future of the club and says Klug is excited about some of the players who are coming through, including those starting full-time in the summer of 2014 and also a couple who have committed to join in 2015. He says Klug hopes to see some of the current scholars sitting on the first team bench by the end of the season, although that is entirely the manager’s decision, as everything is at Town, even if that isn’t always the case elsewhere. Clegg says that independence and lack of outside pressure or influence was amongst the things which attracted McCarthy to the Blues. Addressing claims that the club is not the club it used to be, Clegg said it needs to be accepted that society moves on, but that he believes that the values which go back to the Cobbolds are as important now as they were then. Clegg cited Simon Milton pointing out at the recent Supporters Club AGM that the club does more in the community now than it did during his playing days. The chief executive said this is 40% more player activity in the community this year than in 2009. He says Supporters Club branch events are regularly attended, not only in Ipswich but further afield. He says there were 432 community visits during 2011/12, which is well above the average at Championship level, but he would like more. Clegg also praised the Charitable Trust. The chief executive says engaging with fans is important to the club, citing his meetings with the Supporters Club executive board and the Supporters Forum, which meets four to six times a year. He said it had also been known for him to look at TWTD on occasion. Clegg says things such as the Adnams Man of the Match app, the choice of My Way as an anthem and the current half-time entertainment have been the result of that engagement with fans. Joking that the club can’t even give free beer away, he said that the recent buy one get one free offer illustrated that football fans are creatures of habit. At the Burnley game, of the 789 vouchers for free pints of beer issued before the game, 568 were unredeemed at half-time or after the match. He paid tribute to Marcus Evans and his investment over the five years he has owned the club and said that the appointment of McCarthy and the cash spent on players in the summer illustrate his continued commitment to Town. Clegg thanked shareholders for their support and said he recognised that being the chief executive means that people take out their frustrations on him when things aren’t going so well. He accepts that that’s part of his job and said he is grateful to those who tried to provide him with “some direction and some gentle encouragement” during difficult periods. He added that he hoped shareholders felt the club dealt with Paul Jewell’s departure in a manner that was in the best traditions of Town. Clegg said he has every expectation that Mick McCarthy will prove to be a success, although to much amusement, he initially mistakenly referred to the new boss as ‘Mick Mills’, a slip which he said would cost him very dearly in terms of expensive dinners for the new Town manager in the coming weeks. The chief executive and McCarthy then answered questions from the floor, the first referring back to FFP and how difficult it would make it for Marcus Evans to invest above and beyond the turnover generated by the club. Clegg said the new rules mean the club needs to be even smarter as a business in order to generate even more income and this was something he and McCarthy had spoken about with regard to ways in which the players might be used in the community to play a role in doing this. He says the FFP rules legislate against the ability spend beyond the break-even model and for that money to be built up as debt. However, he said owners of football clubs can make additional investments via equity. Overall, Clegg said the current situation with Championship clubs building up debt is not sustainable and that the new rules mean the issue will finally have to be addressed. He said Evans will continue to invest in the club and that he believes that Town can continue to be competitive. McCarthy said increasing attendances will help to increase income and in turn the budget he has to work with. Marcus Evans’s lack of attendance at the AGM and his privacy were the subject of the next question. Clegg said that Evans is overseas at present and that his stance regarding his low profile isn’t going to change. The BBC survey which claimed Town had the highest matchday ticket price in the Championship was raised. Clegg said he recognised that football isn’t cheap but pointed to the freeze in season ticket prices, which have risen once in the last five years. He says he tries to protect season ticket prices with the club relying on those fans to renew every year. He said the club has tried to reflect the current economic situation in terms of prices and that they are constantly evaluating the position. He felt that quite often the comparisons made aren’t always like for like with the £42.50 seat mentioned in the BBC survey a premium ticket in D Block. The chief executive pointed to the club’s policy of grading games and said that in the first six home games of the season people who were buying matchday tickets paid an average price of £25.50, compared with £26.50 for the same period last year. He says the club are trying to address the situation but in the context of FFP and making sure the manager’s got sufficient cash to put a successful team on the pitch. McCarthy mischievously suggested that fans should be responsible for grading the games over the last few weeks. A questioner asked about academy players and the first team, saying that too many in recent seasons had started to make a brief impact before being sold, citing Jordan Rhodes and Connor Wickham. He asked whether young players were going to be brought into the team and stay there, as he would like, rather than sold on, often for low fees. McCarthy agreed, saying he’d like to see a team full of vibrant, young, locally-born players with “blue and white running through their veins”. He says you get something special from players in that situation, “as we saw with Luke Hyam when he came on” recently. Explaining why he didn’t play Hyam in his first game, he says he came in and played the most experienced team he could in his first game at Birmingham, which he felt was the right choice, and it worked with Town winning 1-0. While not commenting on the Rhodes situation, McCarthy believes Town got a very good deal for Wickham — “You have swum the Channel underwater getting £9 million for him!”. He says he was impressed with the former Blues striker when he came on recently at Sunderland at Norwich, but says that that sort of fee (Town received an initial £8.1 million plus further top-ups) will have helped the club move forward. McCarthy says the EPPP inspectors asked him whether Town were a ‘selling club’ and whether he would sell Connor Wickham and he said he had told them that if he could sell a Connor Wickham in order to bring in the players he wants, to get a team on the field that the crowd would want and into the Championship play-off positions with a view to getting promoted, he would. Moving back to Hyam, McCarthy says the midfielder would have kept his place in the side but for his calf injury. He says he’d ultimately like to see more kids in the team as the season progresses but for the moment Championship survival is still the priority. Clegg agreed, adding that academy scholars progressing into the first team makes financial sense as well as being good for the community with no fees to pay and their wages tending to be lower. McCarthy was thanked for putting a smile on the faces of fans for the first time in a while, although the questioner said he was concerned about the way the off-field side of the club has been managed in recent years. Clegg said he and owner Evans were the ones picking a manager without the benefit of hindsight and that it’s easy to look back at past events and make judgements. He said they had been convinced that Paul Jewell was the right manager, but that it didn’t work out despite the former boss’s hard work. He says he and Evans believe McCarthy’s the right man to take the club forward and will get behind him and give him all the support he needs. McCarthy, pointing to the fact that he has had only four jobs in 20 years, added that he hadn’t particularly wanted to get embroiled in a relegation battle, but having spoken to Clegg and Evans and knowing the history of the “fantastic” club, had decided to take the job, which he sees as a long-term project. “I’ve come here with the intention of staying here and I know the Financial Fair Play thing will impede it somewhat, but it’s going to impede everybody else, except the ones who have come down. “But I firmly believe that I can get Marcus Evans excited if we can play like that on a Saturday afternoon and we win and we get going up the league and he will back us to whatever extent he can. “I also think it will get you lot excited as well and you’ll turn up and we’ll have bigger crowds than probably 17 or 18 of the others in the league.” He says his own management skills they have “a pedigree and a history of success” and he’ll try and do the same here. The number of loanees was the subject of the next question. McCarthy dismissed the idea it’s hard to get players to come to Town, as long as the club is playing and doing well. He said he had heard the same about Crystal Palace not long ago when they were struggling but now they’re towards the top of the league everybody seems to want to go there. Similarly with Barnsley, the same thing was said, but when they had their period in the Premier League it was easy to get players to go there. Moving back to Town, the new boss says it’s a “really good club, well supported, it’s got a good history.” Additionally, he says whether players sign will come down to whether there’s a decent team, what the wages are like, how much the agent’s going to get paid and whether there’s a manager that players want to come and play for. He says other managers have said Town were the best team they’ve faced after recent matches and McCarthy believes they have to maintain that form and that being the case, players will want to come here. Regarding the loan players, McCarthy knocked back the questioner’s suggestion that it’s cheaper to buy rather than loan players. He said he inherited the loan players, admitting it’s not easy to manage the situation because so many of them don’t know what they’re doing in January. What happens to them then depends on lots of people’s opinions — their parent clubs’ managers, whether someone else is in for them and whether they buy into the ethos of the club. Regarding the latter, he feels they have and that they have been particularly good and have really contributed. He added that the club might have to deal with some more loans in January. The subject of players leaving the club at the end of their contracts was raised, McCarthy reiterating his recent comments suggesting that it’s not always a good idea to give players new contracts and that a little bit of insecurity can be a motivator. He says it’s up to him to create an environment in which they are happy working and playing their football and, if he can do that, then he expects them to want to stay at the club. McCarthy added that a few weeks ago not many people will have been wanting the club to offer the players new contracts and that the Blues are still far from safe despite the good start to his tenure. The chief executive said that the matter of players leaving on free transfers is not “a straight forward issue”. He says Marcus Evans is a very astute businessman and he weighs up every decision with his manager regarding a player including what contract offers may or may not be made, and that will have been the case with every player who has left the club on a free transfer. Regarding speculation about players coming in, Clegg said that supporters shouldn’t believe everything they read in the press, as there is “so much spinning that goes on around the football media, in the local media — stalking horses out there, agents flying kites, it’s very, very dangerous for you to believe everything you read in the press”. A shareholder asked whether fans are allowed to attend training, to which McCarthy quickly responded, “Are you any good?”. The Blues boss said he had nothing to hide, except perhaps in the days running up to games when he might want to keep tactics under wraps. After the meeting Clegg and McCarthy clarified the matter with the Blues boss preferring not to have fans present one to two days before home games — not Monday before a Tuesday game or Thursday and Friday prior to a Saturday - and two to three prior to away matches and if in any doubt to call the training ground to check. The final question concerned the return of goal music, to which McCarthy said he thought it hadn’t been needed at Town for a while. Clegg said the matter would be looked into with this and the playing of My Way set to be reviewed at a Supporters Forum. In the evening’s formal business, all resolutions were passed including the re-elections of John Kerr and Simon Clegg to the PLC board and Elizabeth Edwards’s election. Shareholders are yet to receive their usual information sheet outlining the financial position as the club as a whole as this is still with the auditors. It is expected to be sent out in the next few weeks.
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