Bowden Leaves Town and Leaves Questions

Chief Executive Derek Bowden has this week revealed that he will become the next in a long line of Directors to leave his position at Portman Road. The announcement is particularly poignant as Bowden represents the last of the active directors at the club who existed prior to the Marcus Evans buyout. It raises a lot of questions.

First off, it has to be acknowledged that Derek Bowden has seen out a very accomplished period as Chief Executive at Ipswich Town. There is no question that the job he found himself with was probably quite at odds with that which he was interviewed for back in 2002. Yet, he took on the challenge and can leave the club nine years later with a great deal of credit.

In his time as Chief Executive, he was involved in two of the most important off-field developments in the history of the football club- administration and a takeover. The announcement that he is to leave raises many questions in relation to the latter.

Bowden will now join the likes of David Sheepshanks, Holly Bellingham and Kevin Beeston, to name but three, in deciding their future lies elsewhere following the takeover. The background to these decisions is not quite clear in any of the cases.

It would naturally be presumed that all of them feel that, having invested a great deal of time and money in seeing the club through a troublesome period, they are satisfied that their work is done and that they can now happily hand over the baton to those now in charge.

However, its not entirely clear that any of them left of their own accord. In Bowdens case, the only official comment on the matter has been a testament from club owner Marcus Evans to Bowdens work in the past. There is no comment from the outgoing Chief Executive himself, which would appear unusual in these circumstances. The case was similar with previous outgoing Directors.

Its unclear if the conditions of the takeover may have involved a clause that the existing board members would step aside within an agreed period of time. However, its also unclear as to whether Bowden has been recently asked to step aside. The implications of such a move are far more intriguing.

Similarly, in the event that it is Bowdens own decisions, then why? After 7 years, is the decision bourne of satisfaction or dissatisfaction? Again, in the case of the latter, it provokes further questions.

What we do know is that there has been enormous upheaval in the running of Ipswich Town Football Club over the past 18 months. It has seen all the long-standing Directors, with long and varied histories of supporting Ipswich Town Football Club, replaced by those with little previous knowledge of Ipswich Town Football Club, or perhaps football in general, with no definitive reasoning as to why this has happened.

Thats not to say that the reasoning must be negative. Bowden himself acknowledged previously that he was not an Ipswich Town fan before coming to the board. There is every reason that those stepping aside are happy to do so and believe it is helping build the club ever stronger off the field.

It would just be nice to hear a bit more from the people concerned. Its ironic that Bowden himself has been the person in recent times that fans would look to in order to communicate such information.