I'd argue Evans is doing it to them

I'm still beyond staggered that promising youth in Ipswich itself, let alone surrounding areas, wear Norwich kit to train and are trained by Norwich coaches. The fact he's conceded that completely and doesn't even seem to have tried to compete at that level screams at me.

Add in the state of the stadium - I mean a lick of paint and clearing weeds and so in isn't going to cost much in football terms, but he just won't put the necessary in to do it - and there's this air of long-term short-termism about the whole thing. He bungs in several million each year, but allocates that money poorly with no long-term view on return, or even what success would actually mean for a club the size of Ipswich let alone a plan to get them to that point B from the point A at which they currently sit. For a long time it was just-enough to keep them nibbling miserably in mid-chumps. Not any more, though.

In short, loadsamoney but no strategy, no effective governance structures - at Board level there should be all kinds of work going on around this stuff, and if there is, well it's not readily discernable from the outside - and a really good case study in terms of how not to run a football club.

It's even better from our perspective because we've switched from the strategy of investing in marquee signings which may or may not work - yes Huckerby, Crouch, Ashton but also RVW, Naismith etc - to a sustainable youth-first policy. Honestly in modern football I'm really not sure there's another path for any club without a billionaire sugar-daddy (it's never a sugar-mummy, at that level) to challenge even at the lower end of Prem/top end of Champs level, where we currently sit, let alone higher than that.

But if that - sustainable youth-led progression - is Ipswich's Point B, they've got a hell of a job because an obviously bigger, more successful club is already hoovering up anyone who looks like a footballer on their turf. Namely, us.

All of this, in my book, is on Evans, not Lambert or Hurst or McCarthy (who I'd argue actually did brilliantly there, though the "football" was excoriating to watch).

Posted By: Old Man on December 1st 2020 at 13:30:57

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