Ipswich are fancied by some as a dark horse for a promotion push after an impressive end to last season, but given the investment in the club by owner Marcus Evans that wouldn’t be before time.
As football throttles towards its first ÂŁ100m player, it's strange to think how small time the big deals of the past seem by comparison.
Trevor Francis was the first £1m footballer of course but when I was growing up the big news was Jack Walker's bankrolling of Blackburn Rovers. Remember how amazing it seemed when they spent £3.3m on Alan Shearer from Southampton? And then topped it with £5m for Chris Sutton? Small beans these days but at the time it was like when Stevenson built his Rocket and people were running around saying the human brain would literally explode if it travelled faster than 30 miles per hour. Driving round the North Finchley one way system you’d be forgiven for thinking some people are still of that opinion in the present day.
It’s all rather a shame for Ipswich Town owner Marcus Evans really who, according to the club's last set of accounts, is owed more than £72m by the club. Back in the 1990s it cost Walker less than that to rebuild four sides of Ewood Park and make Blackburn Rovers the champions of England. These days it's barely been enough to keep Ipswich exactly where they were when Evans bought them in 2008.
Those most recent accounts, for 2012, show everything at Ipswich heading in the opposite direction to what you'd want in a business. Gate receipts were down by more than ÂŁ1m to ÂŁ5.36m while the wage bill increased ÂŁ400,000 to ÂŁ17.95m. Losses increased by ÂŁ12m to ÂŁ15.96m, and in truth they'd have been as bad the previous year had they not flogged Connor Wickham and Jon Walters for big money. Transfer revenue was down from ÂŁ10.84m in 2011 to just ÂŁ248,000 in 2012. Commercial and television revenue fell by ÂŁ1m. The debt went up from ÂŁ72.83m to ÂŁ79.62m of which ÂŁ72.62m was owed to Evans. Only in football can a 'business' with this sort of balance sheet continue to happily carry on as it is.
And what has Evans had by way of reward for this? Well, not much. They finished eighth in the Championship in his first season in charge — 2007/08 — and have never managed to get that high again. They have subsequently finished ninth, fifteenth, thirteenth, fifteenth and fourteenth last season. In total 52 players have come in during that period on permanent contracts, and if you include youth teamers released from professional deals 85 have gone out. Evans has also had four different managers. For all of that, and £72m spent, Ipswich are basically exactly where they when he found them seven seasons ago.
They are fancied by some to do well this season. Last season threatened to be another relegation struggle but Paul Jewell was replaced by Mick McCarthy halfway through the campaign and he salvaged eight wins and four draws from the final 17 games to secure another midtable finish. McCarthy has won this league before with Wolves and Sunderland and has operated shrewdly with minimal funds this summer, attracting some money to their promotion price which is currently 9/1 with certain outlets.
McCarthy, not known for getting carried away it must be said, is keen to play those hopes down. He said this week: "Marcus is the same as me. He wants to aim as high as we can. But, like me, he is realistic about it as well."
Again, only in football could you plough £72m into a business that shows not a single sign of improvement whatsoever for six years and be told in the seventh that you have to be "realistic” when somebody suggests things might finally go a bit better this time. The old joke about becoming a millionaire by first becoming a billionaire and then buying a football club never rang quite so true.
Ipswich used to be held up as a shining of example of how to do business in the mad world of football finance. Promoted via the play offs after several botched attempts back in 2000 they took the Premier League by storm in their first season and finished fifth with George Burley at the helm. That qualified them for Europe but they were then guilty, QPR-style, of overreaching themselves in a second season — spending big money and handing out long contracts to the likes of Nigerian international Finidi George and Italian goalkeeper Matteo Sereni. They made a decent fist of things in Europe, and even beat Inter Milan in a first leg UEFA Cup tie before crashing in the second, but struggled in the league and found themselves relegated.
Now carrying a big wage bill, and forced to mix European fixtures with a hectic First Division campaign courtesy of success in the Fair Play League, they collapsed into a financial mess. Joe Royle subsequently came close to returning them to the big time in 2004/05 with an attractive side, but it had been put together in a season when, unfortunately for the Suffolk faithful, there was a freakish number of outstanding teams in the Championship and they were muscled out of the automatic spots by Wigan and Sunderland and beaten in the play offs by West Ham.
That team was sold off, and there has even been a brief spell in administration for this once model club. Evans has steadied the ship, while running up a huge personal debt which, thankfully, he shows no inclination to call in any time soon.
Perhaps his biggest failing has been the appointment of managers — he may have had a lucky escape by not getting Mike Newell from Luton when he first took over but Billy Davies would have been a far better option than Jim Magilton in his first ever managerial role. Roy Keane is a serial spender of money for little return — this the man who thought Anton Ferdinand was worth £8m — and perhaps his time at the club could be summed up by the decision to sell Jordan Rhodes to Huddersfield for £350,000 and putting that towards the £1.6m purchase of Tamas Priskin. Keane now spends his time aggressively saying what other people should do from behind a desk in an ITV studio, something he once said he’d http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/sunderland/3400833/Roy-Keane-sav visit the dentist than ever take part in.
Paul Jewell’s career has alternated between hits (Bradford, Wigan) and misses (Sheff Wed, Derby) and perhaps Ipswich can console themselves with the fact that usually when he misses he misses spectacularly, whereas at Portman Road they simply stood still a while longer.
Evans might have nailed it with McCarthy. Vastly experienced, knows the division, two previous promotions under his belt, straight talking — he might be just what they need. There is a danger that what happened at Wolves after he left could make him appear better than he really is — Wolves were well on their way down a path to oblivion with him at the helm — but there’s no doubting the work he’s done at Town so far. If he does succeed where so many have failed before him, the new television deal for the Premier League means Ipswich could probably wipe that debt to Evans out with one nine-month top flight spell. Fingers crossed the chairman has picked right this time.
We’re going for the longer interview to replace the Scout Report section again this week and we thank Phil Ham from TWTD for his time and insight. He’s about to tell you what bollocks I’ve been talking for the last 1,500 words…
A poor start to last season and a managerial change. Why didn't it work for Paul Jewell? What did he do wrong?
We actually started last season reasonably enough with a home draw against newly-relegated, then-Championship favourites Blackburn and an away win at Watford. But then we went to Blackpool and lost 6-0 and were knocked out of the Capital One Cup by Carlisle a few days later and the wheels and pretty much everything else seemed to fall off.
The squad was short on numbers and experience and by the time more cash was made available for further additions, the transfer window had closed and so a legion of loan signings — including DJ Campbell from you boys - were brought in to stabilise things. That they did, but not until after Paul Jewell’s time had run out. Aside from a spell in the second half of 2011/12, Jewell never really got things moving in the right direction and Town never lost the uncanny ability to give away bad goals. Quite often two in the last five minutes while 1-0 ahead, annoyingly enough.
What did you think of the appointment of Mick McCarthy at the time?
We needed a tried and trusted safe pair of hands after several years of struggling towards the wrong end of the Championship and there are few safer pairs of hands at this level than Mick McCarthy’s.
And how do you rate the job he's done so far? What did he change? What has he done right?
Difficult to fault the job he did last season. He tightened things up, made sure every match was a battle and got us away from the bottom of the table to safety, which was the task in hand. He’s got the best out of players such as Tommy Smith — eventually last season’s Player of the Year who had struggled under Jewell — and Luke Hyam.
Several QPR fans on our message board have tipped Ipswich as a dark horse because of the run you went on last season with McCarthy. Is it too soon to be thinking about promotion? How's the level of optimism around your support base?
Optimism is high after last season’s form under McCarthy, although I’d be surprised if we were anything more than play-off contenders. That said, if we get a bit of momentum going and some of the clubs with what appear to be better and more expensive squads on paper struggle, then who knows? It does happen every now and then in this division.
Who came in and who left during the summer? Assess your transfer activity during the window so far.
We’ve had ten players come in, all but two on Bosmans: one loanee — Ryan Tunnicliffe from Manchester United — and one cash signing, young winger Jack Doherty, who came in from Waterford United in Ireland for a massive £20,000.
Three of last year’s loanees - David McGoldrick, Jay Tabb and Daryl Murphy - were added on a permanent basis, as were Cole Skuse, Frederic Veseli, Christophe Berra, Paul Anderson and goalkeeper Dean Gerken. That sounds a lot, but it’s been more a case of evolution than revolution with McCarthy building on last year’s squad by adding players who are largely experienced Championship performers plus one or two promising youngsters.
We lost the likes of Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Michael Chopra, Andy Drury, Arran Lee-Barrett and Lee Martin. Aside from Martin — who decided to move on, eventually to Millwall, having been offered much reduced terms — none of them were in McCarthy’s plans for the future.
Tell us about your opening games, how have they gone?
Reading we got on top after being under pressure, went ahead and probably would have won it had we scored a second while the Royals were having a bit of a wobbly spell. However, they scored just before half-time, regained some composure and were the better side in a second half in which they grabbed a deflected winner. A reasonable enough performance against recent Premier League opposition even if the result wasn’t what we wanted.
We then lost 2-0 to Stevenage in the Capital One Cup. It was a weakened if not particularly weak side but again the goals came at crucial times. Town had got on top towards the end of the first half, but conceded a penalty just after the break. Then, just as the Blues were putting on the pressure, Boro scored again and that was that.
The first home game was against Millwall last week, Town were good without being brilliant against a Lions side who look like they will struggle. The Blues could have been well ahead before the break but eventually scored three times in the second half, two of them own goals.
Where is the team strong? Who should we be watching out for? Who was player of the year last season?
Centre-half Tommy Smith was last season’s Player of the Year and unsurprisingly for a Mick McCarthy side it’s the defence and hard work throughout the side upon which everything is built. Smith and Luke Chambers formed a solid pairing at the heart of the backline last season, while classy striker David McGoldrick had an excellent pre-season and central midfielder Cole Skuse has impressed during the first few games of the season.
Where are the weak links? Where does the team need strengthening and is there a suggestion of more signings to come?
We probably haven’t got an out and out goal scorer, no 20-goals-a-season man, although the stats from the last few seasons have tended to suggest that a team challenging at the right end of the table doesn’t necessarily need one. Some feel we lack a bit of creativity and we’re certainly not going to win 3-0 every week, but that’s probably the price that’s being paid for the greater solidity at the back.
What do you make of your notoriously private chairman Marcus Evans? He seemed to be the key to throwing money around and getting back to the Prem when he arrived but Ipswich don't seem any further on or much worse than when he arrived four managers later.
Looking back, I suspect Marcus would feel he made the wrong management choices in Roy Keane and Paul Jewell. He presumably felt Keane would repeat the job he did at Sunderland, while Jewell was subsequently brought in after the former’s somewhat erratic reign as an experienced, steadying hand, but failed to pull the job off.
In Mick McCarthy he’s now got the manager he probably should have appointed when it became clear that Jim Magilton’s tenure was going nowhere. Hopefully, a few seasons of stability will see us continue last year’s progress and we’ll eventually bring what’s currently a 12-season spell in the Championship to an end and return to the Premier League.
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