The Ipswich Way

A couple of weeks back I noticed a breathless, slightly sycophantic article on Town in one of the dailies which contained some intriguing news. David Sheepshanks & Jim Magilton are apparently in the habit of giving all the players a shiny dossier titled "The Ipswich Way". If true, I find this curious on a number of levels. What is this mythical Ipswich Way? And if this corporate vision really does exist, do the authors know anything about it?

Historically there certainly was an Ipswich way. Much of the dossier currently gathering dust in the players' loos is almost certainly firmly-rooted in our gilded past. I suspect visions of our proud history is what largely fills Sheepshanks' tome and he's probably not alone. We are all probably guilty of deluding ourselves with carefully-edited visions from the past in a rose-tinted vision of our future in The Ipswich Way. Here's my take on The Ipswich Way.

Chapter 1: Good manners & a certain style

For the first forty years of Town's league life, one of three charming old-Etonians called Cobbold would get on with letting the manager manage and Ipswich would largely prosper. Given that many football clubs seemed to be run by gruff businessmen of somewhat unsavoury disposition, this was slightly unusual. It also helped that Ipswich seemed the very epitome of a well-run club.

Chapter 2: Good football

It helped even more that our team rose out of the third division south and won the league at the first time of asking - and very nearly repeated the trick under Bobby Robson. Clearly The Ipswich Way not only involved great success for the team and manager, it also contains a recipe for World Cup winning (and near-winning) managers.

So, The Ipswich Way undoubtedly has a chapter or two on achieving sustained success through the relentless pursuit of good football - largely built on wholesome, well-behaved players plucked from obscurity - or nurtured through an outrageously successful youth scheme. And in truth, it didn't matter much if Town were unsuccessful - as long as they did it the Ipswich Way.

Chapter 3: Discovering Managerial Genius

The Ipswich Way must also have a chapter or two on how our visionary chairman invariably picks outstanding young managers of seemingly limitless potential. The truth is somewhat different. Appointing Ramsey appears with hindsight to be a stroke of genius - but Robson was pure luck. Robson wasn't John Cobbold's first choice manager - nor even his second. Merely the largely unwanted third, who only got the job when neither Frank O'Farrell nor Billy Bingham could be persuaded to take it. Outrageous good fortune is clearly an integral part of The Ipswich Way too.

Chapter 4: Grow your own

Town have a fine tradition of unearthing good players. Yet until the mid-60's we didn't even have a youth scheme. No matter, if Carlsberg did youth schemes, they would have been proud to slap their logo on ours. For twenty years it was among the best in the country. However, one unfortunate consequence of the Pioneer Stand fiasco was the dismembering of our scouting network. Now we have a much-trumpeted academy - but probably have fewer home-grown players in the team than at any point in the club's history.

Chapter 5: Wear rose-tinted specs at all times

I came on board as a regular Town supporter in the Bill McGarry era - and so my memories of the Ipswich Way date back through forty years of ups and downs. That's a lot of ups and downs. Certainly long enough to dispel some myths. Good football for one. Town have played some truly dreadful football for prolonged periods whilst I have been watching them. And which manager was responsible for the very worst? No, not John Duncan, nor even George Burley - it was Bobby Robson.

It is a little-remembered fact that Town's team after McGarry left was truly dreadful. Old lags like Baxter and Carroll had no time for Robson and initially the club seethed with discontent. Then Robson had to build his own team - slowly. For two years running, Town fans suffered the worst start in the club's history. We not only hit rock bottom, we seemed to go months without scoring, let alone winning.

Chapter 6: Stock up on white wine

Luckily for Robson there was no Sky TV, no radio phone-ins and no internet forums back then - and he was allowed to manage. So he painfully built his team with unsung players and home-grown talent. An oft-quoted Cobboldism surfaced at this time when the North Stand repeatedly chanted for Robson's head. Town were bottom of the league with hardly a goal to their name but it was not a crisis. A crisis at Portman Road was when there was no white wine in the board room.

Dropped points, relegation etc were merely part of the game. A sense of perspective was certainly part of the Ipswich Way back then. But alas, no longer.

Things changed somewhat with the sad and cruelly-premature demise of John Cobbold. His brother Patrick was hardly in the same league as his brother or father - although Town continued to prosper. And when he went, it was effectively the end of the Cobbold line.

Chapter 7: Build, Build, Build!

The Ipswich way began to be redefined in the early 80's when the club made the ill-advised decision to re-build the West Stand at the very time Bobby Robson was leaving. You and I know that rebuilding stands has disastrous consequences.

But back then it seemed an eminently sensible idea. Town fans of a certain age can remember being cooped in the Chicken Shed aka the East Stand. That metamorphosised into the current Cobbold Stand after a couple of well-planned and budgeted developments - all of which went swimmingly. So it seemed entirely logical that the same could indeed be done to the by-now somewhat inadequate West Stand.

Chapter 8: Sell, Sell, Sell!

Alas, our horizons were now so much broader and our vision of the future much more ambitious. Like many teams since, Town thought that the money from European sojourns would go on for ever. Also cup runs. Sadly. getting money in from cup runs only works in the budget if you have a cup run. Again, that particular well rapidly ran dry - and seems to have been pretty arid now for two decades.

So, a fire sale of the good and the great was needed to meet instalments on the Pioneer Stand. Soon we were to learn that Irvin Gernon was not quite as good as Mick Mills, even the likes of Ian Cranson would have to go to fund the increasingly empty new seats in the Pioneer Stand.

Chapter 9: Learn nothing

It took ten long years to recover from the Pioneer Stand debacle. But incredibly, within another decade of recovering - we were at it again. We bounced back from the Pioneer Stand debacle to rebuild the myth of the Ipswich Way under George Burley. Only to rewrite the chapter on pushing the self-destruct button almost word for word. Clearly there are not one but two chapters in The Ipswich Way explaining the necessity to destroy your team and your club by building stands that are patently unnecessary.

Chapter 9: Be a good loser

In many ways, the Burley years are a little microcosm of The Ipswich Way. If you recall Burley, inherited a team in the doldrums - but like Robson before him found there were young players on the books who could paper over the cracks and give him time. Slowly a new team grew that played the Ipswich way. It was a strange era - because our fine, largely young and emerging team, never really threatened to win promotion - usually squeaking into the play-offs on the back of good late runs. And whilst there were some excellent signings along the way to prove we did things The Ipswich Way, there were also some truly terrible visions of our future. Marco Holster & Jonas Axendahl to name but two. But when, at the fourth time of asking we actually won the play-offs, something very strange indeed happened. We became unfeasibly successful - just like under Robson.

Chapter 10: Bask in the limelight

Most of us recall that heady first season back in the Premiership as the epitome of the Ipswich Way. A largely unsung, tightly-knit team overachieving to a staggering degree. If you could have bottled The Ipswich Way that season, you would have made a fortune. The trouble is, you wouldn't want those in charge running the bottling plant. Clearly neither Sheepshanks nor Burley had any clue whatsoever where that success they had waited five long years for had came from.

Chapter 11: Shoot yourself in both feet

So we bought a plethora of highly questionable players at vast expense to destroy team unity. Not content with that we gave them huge contracts - and paid equally lunatic salaries to the overachieving players who had struggled so hard to get promoted for years. But just in case this wasn't enough - we made it a triple whammy. We also built stands to destroy our finances and our future. Not one mind you - but TWO stands, just to make sure. The rest of course, is infamy. As we breathlessly get to the final chapters of The Ipswich Way there must surely be a chapter on shooting yourself in both feet.

Chapter 12: Renege on your debts

To my mind, our current plight is entirely at odds with The Ipswich Way. But the sad truth is that it IS the Ipswich Way. The trouble is, after shooting ourselves in both feet, our debts were so massive that they were unsustainable. Our only plan was to get promoted - and hopefully pay them off. Meanwhile Town sheltered behind admin to ensure that preferential creditors (the players who were largely responsible for the mess) got paid off while they decided when and where to go to in their own time. And while wholly inadequate and morally bankrupt millionaires grabbed their cash, the likes of the St John's Ambulance were left to wonder wistfully what they could do with £9,047.50 were they to get it. All in all it left a fairly unsavoury taste in the mouth.Chapter 13: Renege on your debts again

In a division where a number of journeymen managers have succeeded on the relative cheap in the past - getting promoted on the extremely cheap was a not completely insane plan. Indeed, Joe Royle wistfully said give me £2million and I will get you promoted. Alas he was given borrowed beans and buttons - and when push came to shove we were no longer even paying the interest on the loan

Chapter 14 Sell to a chancer, sell out your own fans

I think all Town fans realised that the club was poised on the brink late last year - and most were lulled into welcoming Marcus Evans takeover with open arms. And without too much spin, it is very easy to make last year's take over sound good for both parties. The sad truth is that it is almost certainly a disastrous deal for Town.

The £32million debt had been written down to £8million - possibly even less. £8million is a manageable sum to a team on the threshold of the play-offs. If I was a director of Ipswich Town Football Club I would have moved heaven and earth to raise it, so the club could emerge from a millstone and effectively be in control of its own destiny.

Perversely, the exact opposite happened. A secret deal was made to convert that £8million debt back into a £32 million debt at a whopping 7% interest. That's £2.24million a year just to pay the interest - let alone repay any future cash injections, Worse still the accounts and financial shenanigans of Ipswich Town are now offshore, out of sight and out of mind.

Chapter 15: Money, Money, money

The mirage created by the spin of the Marcus Evans takeover painted a gilded future. Amongst all the talk of money, little thought was given to the current players who had worked hard to get Town into the play offs. So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that team performances have flagged somewhat since. Nor that new signings of players you or I were barely aware of appear basically no better than what we already had.

At the time of writing, Town are back outside the play offs - effectively worse off than before the takeover. In a perverse sort of way I am secretly pleased selling out to a chancer and being pressured into a vast outlay on unnecessary midfield players has, if anything made us slightly worse. Lashing out vast sums on average players may be the new Ipswich Way - but it doesn't appeal overly to me.

Chapter 16: The Sheepshanks Way

I'll finish where I began - with another charming old-Etonian. Sadly, the only thing Sheepshanks has in common with the Cobbolds is his old school tie. For better or for worse, Sheepshanks' way has been the Ipswich way for well over a decade. It's a strange and heady brew - heavy on glib PR, risible 5 year plans, and abject failure, but also full of near misses and a tantalising glimpse of the way things used to be. Not to mention freeloading, gross financial ineptitude, glad-handing around the inner-sanctums and international junkets of the FA - and selling out to Marcus Evans.

Today, you cannot separate Sheepshanks, luck, stupidity or serendipity from The Ipswich Way. All have played their part - and The Ipswich Way has been a hell of a road to travel. It's been a rocky road in recent years that seemed to be going nowhere fast. The days are long-gone when we were the model of a well-run club. If anything we are the epitome of an appallingly-run club - a glittering example of wasted opportunity and short-term thinking. Even our bizarre sale has more than a whiff of unintentional humour about it. Trouble is, The Ipswich Way is a never-ending story and now we have signed our future away - I'm no longer sure the next chapters are going to be my way.