Chief executive Simon Clegg says Blues owner Marcus Evans takes regular soundings from people throughout football, not just those with links to Town. Evans was reported to have spoken to Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp and other high profile figures in the game before appointing Paul Jewell as boss a year ago.

Former Blues coach, player and scout Charlie Woods, who also worked at Tottenham and with Sir Bobby Robson at Newcastle, meets with Evans and is amongst those with ties to Town with whom the Town owner talks.

While not commenting on the Redknapp link, Clegg confirmed that Evans does canvass opinion from a wide variety of sources: “Marcus sounds out people in football to a level you wouldn’t believe, not just people here in Ipswich.

“Marcus is familiar with a lot of people across the football world and takes regular soundings from many people.

“Ultimately, it’s his viewpoint because he is the owner of the club, but he is a very thorough individual who will do lots of research and will get as much information as he can before coming to a decision.”

Both Evans and Clegg have come in for criticism that they aren’t ‘football men’ in the recent past with the chief executive fully aware that the buck stops with him when things are going badly at the club: “It comes with the job.”

He says some of the dissent is due to not everyone knowing the ins and outs of his role at Portman Road: “First of all, few people understand what a chief executive of a football club actually does.

“This is really a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job. I can be dealing with everything from disciplinary matters relating to youth or senior players, through to meeting the media, to trying to sign commercial deals, trying to sign new players, working through what the future of the Academy’s going to be or trying to work out how best to get some competitive advantage on Financial Fair Play.

“Ultimately it’s trying to run the business of the football club from a philosophy of passionately believing that every person here has got a contribution to make to what happens on the pitch.

“People see that you have lunch in the boardroom and you sit in a smart seat in the directors’ box but they don’t actually see the volume of work which goes on behind the scenes on a day-in and day-out basis.”

Clegg – who revealed that Town have completed 47 loan or permanent deals during his time at the club, 44 different players plus Jack Colback, Daryl Murphy and Jimmy Bullard who have all been signed twice - says he personally addresses some fans’ concerns but can’t give all issues the same attention: “I was on the phone to a fan at 8 o’clock in the morning because he couldn’t call me during the working day and I couldn’t call him the night before.

“He’d sent me an email about something and I felt that it was of sufficient importance that I rang him up. I think he was gobsmacked that I rang him and we were on the phone for 20 minutes.

“And at the end of it he was grateful for the phone call, but people don’t see that. I try to respond to every single fan but I can’t give that level of personal service or I’d spend my time doing nothing else.”

He says he also attends the club’s regular fans’ forums and liaises with the Supporters Club: “Every forum I go to. I’m not there for the whole meeting but I’m normally there for a good 20 minutes and I talk for 10 and they ask me questions for 10.

“I go to Supporters Club branches and do whatever I can because at the end of the day, the fans are the lifeblood of the club.”

Town recently announced that season ticket prices would be frozen for the 2012/13 campaign, something Clegg felt fans wouldn’t have been expecting: “I think people were quite surprised at that but we felt that it was the right thing to do, given performances on the field and the general economic environment that we’re living in at the moment.

“We have to live in the real world. What does that mean? That means I’m not getting any more income from season ticket sales. Therefore, in terms of Financial Fair Play, it means I’m going to have to cut back even more.”

Town also announced the introduction of new ticketing initiatives, some of which came out of the meetings with the Supporters Club: “The under-20s tickets in the Sir Bobby Robson Stand are a new thing this year, as are spreading payments over 12 months and allowing people to apply online.

“The spreading of the payments is something which has been discussed at Supporters Club meetings and I thought it was the right thing to do.

“But again, that costs us more money as a club because it means we don’t get the money up front and whilst people might say that’s much easier for us from a cash flow point of view, it isn’t. It actually means I’ve got less money to play with through loss of interest or whatever it might be.”

The cost of buying tickets on a matchday basis is an area where Clegg is well aware that the club has received criticism with next season’s prices still under consideration: “It has been a bone of contention. I’ve made it very clear that my number one priority is to protect the season ticket holders. But I’m looking at every possibility at the moment.”

Story syndicated from TWTD.co.uk

Photo: Action Images

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