Ipswich -club structure and failure

I remember some discussion back when they were moaning about McCarthy (and Lambert, and recently Cook) about how Ipswich fans seemed wedded to a club structure which felt years (maybe decades) out of date.

For instance ,at the moment they seem to be trying to do , with Ashton ,what we were doing under McNally (have a bastard chief exec who gets good money for the players that you don't want and haggles good deals for the ones you do) -though the targets seem to largely be determined by the manager.

Before that (with McCarthy and the earlier ones they were following the classic thing of a manager in charge of everything and at the mercy of what they could persuade an owner to finance).

Both those models I think neglect how much more complicated running a club has become over the past 10-15 years. Scouting players now involves a whole department and data analysis - the same sort of thing happens internally too.

We joke about the soccerbot, but it's clear any manager here is given a wealth of information about players at every level (youth, U23, out on loan, first team, potential targets). It's a science now.

The magic of management is the blend of that science with the art of people management ,but the days when all this could be handled by one or two people is looooong gone. The infrastructure ,coaching etc at Ipswich has been churned in the past year and still looks hopelessly behind their ambitions.

I wasn't too happy when Farke got the push, and I'm not entirely convinced that Dean Smith's appointment was done with the rigour we expend on signing players, but I never had any doubt that whoever we picked would slot into a system that was established and had good people throughout and clear roles on who does what.

In hindsight, perhaps picking a manager who displays a good sense of the 'art' in the interview process does mean that an appointment like Dean (and Shakey) makes sense. I think it would also make us an attractive proposition for that kind of coach.

Anyway, I think the Smiths, with their decades long experience should get some credit for evolving the backroom structure throughout their time, through at least 3 successful iterations. I think it does go some way to explain why despite the occasional misstep we've not had the parade of problems seen at other, similarly sized clubs (including Sunderland, Blackburn, Bolton, Derby and naturally, Ipswich)

I wonder if they think they're now following the Watford model... But the Watford model really relies on that support structure the manager slots into, which it appears they're still missing.

Posted By: Cardiff Canary, Dec 5, 08:15:44