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Reply | Because we’re not allowed to worry…
at 12:59 7 Jul 2025
We have this from some people every season. Every transfer window even.
Yes, bringing players in early might be ideal. But I would rather bring in the right player on the wrong date, than the wrong player on the right date.
We have done the Delap deal early. Regardless of how much of that sum is available to spend, it was a deal which has a huge impact on our finances, both for PSR purposes, and real cash flow/balance sheet purposes. So transfer business has started early, and we know more of the parameters within which we'll be working than we did.
Of course, there comes a time when it becomes concerning if we are behind the curve, especially if we were to lose a key player (Hutch?) very late in the day. But I suspect we have little control over that.
Furthermore, we simply don't know how far advanced any overtures are, in either direction. It is madness to allow our sentiment to be seriously affected by unevidenced rumours. But it is even more ridiculous to allow our sentiment to be seriously affected by the perceived lack of unevidenced rumours. Remember, and this is often overlooked, that we only get a small piece of the true picture, we don't know how much of the picture we are getting, and the part that we do get is often random (which agent has the loosest lips, which staff member overhears which conversation, which target happens to have a release clause, etc).
If we get promotion, I don't suppose anyone will be caveating their celebrations with a pang of irritation that any wonderful new transfers were signed in late July rather than early July. And I'm yet to see any data showing that earlyish signings are markedly better than late-ish ones.
Even once the window is over, we won't know how successful our window has been. Most fans were happy with last summer's window, even before we knew that Delap would turn out to be anywhere near as good as he did turn out to be. But in retrospect, it turns out that that window wasn't such great shakes, across the board, in terms of what we needed in the Prem. Even now, we maybe don't know what kind of assets (or liabilities) some of those players will be - Greaves, JClarke, Ogbene, Muric? if we can't conclusively judge a window that finished almost a year ago, it's madness to start judging a window that is still very wide open.
Asking when you're allowed to worry suggests you're already worrying. There's presently no reason to worry. That is all that matters. |
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Reply | Kit drop official
at 14:35 5 Jul 2025
Yes to me it really looks like the 1986/87 kit (when the away kit was also red), right down to the little red accents on the very similar collar. The first kit I ever owned. However, that was adidas and this is Umbro, which is slightly odd in itself, but it also means we can't have the stripes on the shoulders/sleeves. If it were adidas and we had the stripes, it would only be the Fisons that's missing! |
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Reply | Erosion of team Ashton / McKenna
at 14:31 5 Jul 2025
But who is ABOVE Mark?
The failure to have a Chairman sitting alongside him as a mentor, and also as a proper check and balance is a real headscratcher to me. I think it's a poor decision, I really do. But hey, let's hope we nail it on the pitch this season, and the issue will become academic. |
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Reply | Interesting Perspective
at 21:49 1 Jul 2025
I appreciate the sentiment behind that, and I've been very impressed the way that Brighton have kept achieving when they've lost managers. It will be interesting to see what happens to Brentford.
But there are some exceptions to this really, in the sense that many organisations can't do much to guard against their top dog being poached. When we hired Kieran, we took a punt. We did our research, it paid off. But sometimes these decisions won't pay off, at least not to that extent. And given that we're not Spurs or Man Utd, at some time, we will lose him. It won't be the fault of the supporters or the club or Ashton. And although he can have other coaches working under Kieran, you can't have two managers at any one time (unlike footballing positions in your squad), so it's very difficult to see what we can really do in order to make it 'no big deal' when he is eventually tempted elsewhere. |
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Reply | Always liked Pearson
at 21:43 1 Jul 2025
I anticipate all, or nearly all, of our squad this year showing their support for the very small minority whose preferences include Tingly Ted's... |
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Reply | Narrrwichhh
at 14:14 1 Jul 2025
Just out of interest, I looked up the Ipswich and Norwich all time records. Norwich lead by 8 fans per game (17,886 − 17,878), according to ChatGPT (yes yes, disclaimer suitably issued), which would mean that we would need to beat them by 765 fans per game this season in order to overtake their all time record. Let's make it happen. |
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Reply | Farewell Bryan
at 16:22 24 Jun 2025
It's a great shame.
It doesn't exactly stop us in our tracks and remove the optimism that doubtless will grow for the new season, but it's a shame to lose a great servant, and it's a shame to give the Budgies anything to Crow about. |
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Reply | Nice one Dara! (n/t)
at 16:19 24 Jun 2025
Really pleased with this news.
Statement of intent. Important to keep the squad together to a large extent, especially those who performed better and have good experience.
We will have some successes in this regard, and we will have some failures. That's life. Delap was unavoidable, Burgess was one that presumably Kieran was comfortable with. The question marks now I suppose are Omari and Axel. I'd love to keep both, but if we lose Axel and keep Omari, then that will have been a decent window on the retention side. And we know that Dara can play over on the right if needs be.
Centre mid rebuild, another striker, decisions decisions on keepers, and we'll see what else comes out of left field. Metaphorically speaking.
I really do think Morsy will play a bigger part this coming season than some think, and he should remain club captain. No problem with Dara being captain when Morsy's not on the pitch though, of course.
I suspect we've had to pay big wages for Dara, but needs must. We wouldn't have been able to attract similar (proven) quality at this level, probably even paying over the odds.
I also imagine there will be some kind of release clause in the event that we don't go back up. In this particular case, that would be entirely fair enough, and justified. His choice was either to force a move to a Premier League club, which I'm sure he could've done, and risked that club being in /another/ relegation battle, or stay with Town and commit to the project of trying to get us up and stay up. If risking losing him next year in the event of a failed promotion bid is the price of making our promotion bid stronger, then it's a no brainer. |
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Reply | Have that lot up the road
at 18:25 21 Jun 2025
Norwich's CB department is strengthening.
Ours is weakening.
Both of these facts are regrettable.
However, I would swap our CB department for theirs. Or any other department for that matter. |
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Reply | Cajuste
at 19:47 20 Jun 2025
The honest truth is that none of us has seen the contract between ITFC and Napoli, so speculation about details in the terms is somewhat pointless.
Nobody knows what the terms of the option were, in circumstances in which we were relegated. Still less do we know the extent to which any such option binds the player in those circumstances. |
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Reply | Philip Billing?
at 14:21 20 Jun 2025
Surely not? We all have automatic direct debits, no? |
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Reply | Swansea, didn't see that one coming!
at 17:34 14 Jun 2025
Really really disappointing.
We won 4 league games last year, and 3 of them were with O'Shea and Burgess starting together.
Greaves: 18 starts, 1 win
Burgess: 10 starts, 3 wins
Let that sink in
I hope that Greaves is the future. I hope that he's money well spent. But I genuinely believe we would have been at least as good a side without him thus far, and we may have paid an 8 figure sum for a downgrade.
Such a shame, and I think Swansea have played an absolute blinder.
Good luck to big Cam (when he's not playing Ipswich), and what a great servant to the club.
I hope we've not thrown the baby out and kept the bathwater. |
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Reply | 116 million
at 19:14 13 Jun 2025
Well, we're talking about the Champions. Nobody expected us to be competing for the Premier League title.
Success would have been staying up, I think most of us were realistic to agree on that. Were you saying at the beginning of the season that there's no way we'll stay up, even with the money we spent? Because I really don't recall too many people saying that. |
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Reply | Trenches with TWTD
at 20:53 9 Jun 2025
You're absolutely right, and you're right that these details are key (or at least of some weight).
They're also in the Premier League, which is a pretty important consideration.
Again, I'm not saying he's going, but I don't think puffing our chests out after a chastening relegation is going to do an adequate job of making our club look either bigger or more attractive than Brentford. |
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Reply | Slicker is truly having a nightmare (n/t)
at 10:55 7 Jun 2025
Still youngish, and any GK can have one bad game. Even a really bad game.
However, his report card this season basically reads:
- club football: not trusted to do anything despite his club having a crisis in goal
- international football: total nightmare when given the chance
You'd have to think that Town will be having a really long hard look at what to do with this position this summer. With Hladky, it looked like we had it sorted. This last season has been a calamity of the Sereni/Marshall order of magnitude.
Has he done enough to be considered part of the answer? On the evidence available, sadly he's done nothing at all. What's the point of a 3rd choice GK? To step up when there's a problem with the 1st and 2nd choices? Well, we had problems with them, and we didn't trust him. Neither was he sent out on loan. It is a baffler for me.
Part of me wants to trust Muric and see if he can turn out to be the quality keeper that we hoped he would be. Part of me thinks that we have to avoid any prospect of a problem like last season, and rip it all up and start again. |
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Reply | Ange Postecoglou sacked.
at 16:48 6 Jun 2025
The writing would seem to be on the wall, judging by the mood music.
But, at the risk of sounding quite 2010s: "source?" |
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