A Not So Magnificent Seven

Seven games in and Towns league campaign has yet to get going in earnest. With some fans getting slightly agitated, Blue Review feels perhaps this isnt the time to be critical as, given upcoming fixtures, it could easily turn on its head in a very short space of time.

So we have now played seven league games and the table is beginning to take some sort of shape. Unfortunately for Town fans, it is shaping up to be a fairly unimpressive season. Our team languishes in the lower half of the table, just three points off a relegation place and already eight points adrift of an automatic promotion place. Worse still, Norwich, despite their multitude of problems have temporarily popped above us in the table.

Clearly things are not going to plan (If there ever was a plan). The question now on many impatient Town fans' lips, is will our invisible owner give Jim Magilton the push and seek a manager of his own choosing to oversee his little investment, or will Magilton be given that precious, all-too rare commodity, time?

My own slightly jaundiced view is that I doubt Marcus Evans cares that much. The terms of Town's secretive sell out were so generous to our mysterious owner, that as long as the myth of premiership money is maintained - and the club is stabilised & run in a sensible manner (which to my mind a corner shop owner could achieve quite nicely), then Ipswich Town Investment Inc (a community club now domiciled in Bermuda) remains a ludicrously profitable little exercise - at least on paper.

So if I was a betting man, I would not put money on Magilton being unceremoniously sacked by the end of September, having wasted his inheritance on a multitude of ill-judged signings. I suspect he will be allowed to see out his contract and carry on in his relatively harmless style until the end of the season - when if things improve, we might perhaps finish 12th.

Whilst that might be seen as a disaster by intolerant fans thinking instant success follows a multitude of strange signings, it is not the end of the world. The problem is that there are rather too many better-off and better run clubs than our own. Twelfth is where I think we'll finish for the simple reason that this division is a bit more competitive than last season - and we are that bit less competitive.

Yet hope is at hand. The table lies a little because we have a home game in hand, having played two away games in a row. And we actually managed to avoid defeat in both - so hey, that's an unbeaten run stretching to a dizzying three games. Better still, we now have two home games coming up that both look more than winnable. So in two games time, the team could be on a roll and on the fringe of the play off places.

We even have a home game in the Can-I-be-bothered Cup against a Wigan team that probably see themselves as far too grand for such a competition. All in all the next few weeks could be more than a little rosy.

But here's the thing. I just don't care so much any more. I think a lot of Town fans of a certain age think the same way. What's going on at Ipswich at present seems, well if not a little odd - certainly somewhat pointless. All of seven games into the season and Magilton has begged two players who aren't even ours to make up the numbers - which together with a hotchpotch of signings makes for an overblown squad and a pretty unfamiliar team.

Unfamiliarity is probably half the problem. The team, such as it is needs bedding down, to see if they can form a cohesive unit. Does Magilton have the nous or patience to develop a settled team? Time will tell - but I for one won't be holding my breath.

The funny thing is, in an era when most teams no longer try in the cup competitions, it will be ironic if Town actually stir themselves on Wednesday by going on a cup run. Hey, let's face it by winning two cup matches we are already on a roll that has rarely been equalled in recent years.

Some fans might yearn or the overpriced, overblown mediocrity of the premier league... but looking back it's the cups that have provided most of the good memories. It's surely a sign of the times that a semi-motivated Wigan team might hold the key to our season and Magilton;s future. Almost by accident, after a less than auspicious start to the season, Jim Magilton finds himself on the threshold of something. Will it be something, good, bad or ugly? Who cares - as long as our invisible owner gets his fistful of dollars.

A Different Ball Game

Jim has reached the end of another transfer window and the team has been well and truly revamped in the time since it opened. Has it taken us forward significantly? Are we closer to the Premiership than we were? Blue Review, in his first column of the new season, thinks we are, but isnt sure thats necessarily a good thing.

After a close season with a bewildering number of improbable transfer targets being raised on an almost daily basis, it was I suppose, somewhat inevitable that this would be a season with a difference. After last season's near miss, conventional wisdom had it that a bit of team strengthening here and there would create a stronger team - and a realistic tilt at promotion.

Most Town supporters greeted the new season with optimism. Four games in and the atmosphere has change somewhat. Last season Portman Road was a fortress - but we could hardly buy a point away from home for the first half of the season. This season is the polar opposite. Two home games - two inept defeats. The first away game brings a thumping 3-0 win. But the biggest difference has been in personnel - with new signings being mooted or even signed on an almost weekly basis.

The danger for Town (and presumably Jim Magilton) with this polar opposite approach is that the bad displays have been at home in front of lots of witnesses. Last season the rash of shambolic away displays was seen by a minority - and the relentless tide of home wins kept the fickle Portman Road crowd happy. This season the knives could be out unless Magilton's ever-changing teams can turn things around..

Hopefully, it is still early days and the somewhat feeble display against Wolves is an indication of Wolves' excellence, rather than Town's serial ineptitude. But before the game, as I leafed through the programme, I found myself wondering... are Wolves the new Ipswich?

Most of their players seemed to be young - and home-grown. Their major signing, Ebanks-Blake is not only a steal, he is upwardly mobile and clearly destined for better things. The time was when Ipswich Town used to be run this way. I for one, was not entirely surprised when the game turned out the way it did.

Ever since Town's dubious takeover and the availability of a bit of someone else's money, Magilton's transfer strategy and his team building seems to have veered wildly off-track. Last season we had a surprising bulk purchase on non-complimentary midfielders in the transfer window and not the widely-anticipated central defender.

In the close season, a team that scored more goals than almost anybody suddenly has a plethora of would-be strikers lined up to demoralise a pretty effective strike force, not to mention richly promising Jordan Rhodes.

If memory serves, we have been linked with an underperforming Greek, whose lack of goals helped get his team relegated. an obscure Albanian, the eternally injured and frankly not very good Shola Amoebi - and a Slovenian. Not forgetting our apparent obsession with an ex-Preston striker who has gone distinctly iffy and never scored many goals when in his pomp. This after we have already snapped up Kevin Lisbie who himself is surely not really capable of scoring more goals than the existing forwards if Magilton demonstrated any real faith in them.

The defensive signings have been even stranger. McCauley seems to have been Magilton's chosen one - and who knows, had he arrived last season, we might have shoehorned our way into the play offs instead of out of them. But to go for Plug yet again in the hope that he can rekindle some of his old form, rather than look elsewhere for a goalie smacks of laziness. And the less said about Thatcher the better. And still we are not finished. Amoebi's fragile hamstrings won't put us off apparently - and now a German full back who can't get near Fulham's first team is being asked to 'step down a level'. It smacks of madness rather than desperation.

Being a cynic, I have often wondered what real supporters of teams that have been hijacked really think. What can it be like to have supported Chelsea through thick and thin, to see your team bought as a plaything of a bloke who lives his entire life in a bullet-proof bubble - and the team changes on an almost daily basis as the plunder from another country's economy is thrown away on posturing prima donnas?

Ok as long as the signings are good seems to be the answer.

Now however, we have our own dubious owner and the joke seems to be on us. Does Magilton really want all these signings - or is he being pressured into them because our mysterious owner seeks a 'return on his investment'. Do Town fans really want to see weekly signings - or would they rather see a team develop and be able to identify with their team?

Maybe the ever-revolving door is the way of it nowadays. Fulham have apparently got through over 30 players in less than a year. Has it done them any good though? Are they any better now than they were under Chris Coleman a few years ago, who seemed to be able, intelligent - and building a team.

But here's the rub. By quoting examples from the Prem I am as guilty as the powers that be at Town. Everybody is Prem-obsessed. Everybody is looking for short-term solutions. For a club like Town to be telling useless, unproven players who have achieved absolutely nothing as back-up players at third-rate Premiership teams that a move to Town is 'a step down' is suicidal. To endlessly trawl the fag end of third division national teams for bit-part players in foreign leagues is, given recent experiences, a bit like slitting your own wrists for a second time.

To my mind, the secret of success lies a lot closer to home. Hull City went up with a nucleus of players who had played in the third and fourth divisions (including a captain they filched from Cambridge United). Stoke went up with a goal-plundering striker who we ourselves let slip through our fingers. Neither looked like promotion favourites this time last season. Nor, incidentally, did West Brom, whose record at the same time last season was Played 3, lost 2, won 1.

So you could argue with some justification that we are right on target to top this league. But I wonder. Should we be trying to play catch up with Wolves and Bristol City by chasing after Greeks, Albanians, Macedonians or lumps with fragile hamstrings - and toughening up our defence by signing somebody on a downward spiral who has a reputation for thuggishness, but perhaps can't cut the mustard any more?

It's early days - but the signs are not good. Endlessly acquiring more and more players is a recipe for player discontent if the newcomers are no better than what is already here.

All things considered we were not that far away last season. A bit more organisation away from home (and our away from in the last few games was as good as any in the division) and we would have made the play offs. Instead we have a plethora of new signings to make up a 'strong squad'. I hope history is not repeating itself. We all know what happened last time Town went on a signing blitz.

The strongest second division in the world

As the old season gradually completes all its remaining engagements, attention will very quickly turn to the new season. The Championship remains a tough league to get out of and next season it might just be even tougher, as Blue Review contemplates.

A gross myth will be given its annual airing again this week. That recurring myth is the 'fact' that the 'championship' play off final is the richest club game in the world - with an eye-watering £60million for the winners. It is of course utter nonsense - but when does reality ever intrude into the strange and barmy world of football?

We know it is arrant nonsense because we too have recently won the richest prize in club football - and our prize for winning such riches was to be destitute within 2 years - and ultimately to be sold down the river by a man too arrogant to resign. Sheepshanks' continued presence and brazen lack of humility probably has it roots in a much-avoided fact - for most football clubs the Premier League inevitably leads to ruin.

Yes there is plenty of Premier League money to be hoovered up - but inevitably it is all thrown away. It is the huge squads of very average players who are raking in massive salaries that are getting it all (and their agents). Yes club officials are also paying themselves deeply offensive sums of money for doing very little - but it is the players who are benefiting from the Premier League being awash with money. The clubs are almost universally going down the pan - because the money is frittered away far more quickly than it flows in.

Another myth is that there is money to be made in the Premiership. I am not sure any club makes any money in the Premiership. In an era when the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United are in debt to the tune hundreds of millions of pounds and giants like Wigan, Bolton and erm Sunderland are racking up enormous debts just to stay on the gravy train, you have to wonder what the point of it all is.

This week we are supposed to be enthusiastic about two debt-ridden, foreign-owned, foreign-managed and largely foreign-playered teams taking each other on in the Champions League Final. This absurd match is doubly ridiculous because each team is only there because if has spent hundreds of millions it effectively does not have.

One has its wealth underpinned by the rather fragile USA credit market, currently in a bit of a crisis. The other has got its money from somewhere so dubious that its owner allegedly recently sent a bullet proof car to help him cross the road from his helicopter landing pad to the Wigan ground - and wouldn't even try the local hospitality (but who can blame him for that?).

It does I suppose I have a certain curiosity value, especially if Chelsea win, so becoming Champions of Europe a week after coming second best in their own league to the team they beat in the final. But then, cup competitions are rarely won by the best teams - which is why the double held almost mythical status for most of the last century.

But mentioning the ludicrous and overblown Champions League, brings me round to the subject of this article. Because, as you know, 3 'English' clubs in the semi finals of this competition provides the proof that our league is of course the strongest league in the world. Really? By using the same myopic and misleading yardstick, I suggest that our own league, the Championship, (or as I prefer to call it, the second division), is the strongest league in the world because three of our members reached the semis of the FA Cup, which itself of course is the most wonderful cup competition in the world, the galaxy and beyond.

Now I am prepared to admit that this may well not be the case. But I tell you what it does hint at. Our division is very strong - and has great strength in depth. In fact, our division, far from being the weak division of popular folklore is probably the strongest it has ever been. You disagree? There is compelling evidence to suggest that I am right.

My first piece of evidence is the reason I so despise the Premiership - the vast and ever-increasing numbers of foreign mercenaries plying their trade here. The bar has effectively been raised. With very few clubs now buying football league players, it follows that the standard of the lower leagues must be that much higher - because the best most of the top domestic players can now aim for is a place in the Championship.

My second compelling piece of evidence is the ever-increasing tide of foreign players in the lower leagues. The vast numbers of second grade foreign players must surely be better than our own second grade players. After all, they can allegedly control a football and use their left feet.

My third piece of compelling evidence is that Premiership managers rarely, if ever, buy league players. The best a decent, emerging Championship player can aspire to used to be Charlton or Boro - now it is Boro and Wigan. Staying put is almost certainly a better option (apart from the money). So it follows that there must now be more decent players in the second tier of English football than at any previous time in history.

My fourth piece of evidence is that we find it so hard to get promoted. It used to be possible for Town to get relegated with a hopeless team, take on the likes of McGarry or Lyall and pop back up as unlikely champions within two years. That is now a pipe dream. It now takes us at least five years - and then only through the back door of the play offs.

Far from making it easier of get promoted - the play offs have proved to be a great leveller. Any team in mid-table towards the end of the season is in with a chance of making the play offs. Which effectively makes promotion a lottery rather than a rite of passage through merit.

My fifth and final piece of evidence is that we can't use the myth of money (or lack of it). Leicester had money and went down. We got money and went backwards. With the current squad now destabilised by important departures and mass redundancies (for which transfer-listing is a euphemism), our current situation is looking a little tenuous to say the least.

We are effectively short of a club captain and inspirational central defender, goalkeeper, left back - and a striker of presence who can stay fit and/or motivated throughout a season of what passes for man management in the surreal world of Jim Magilton. That is, I put it to you, a big ask.

By contrast, the world's richest game in club football next weekend will be contended by two teams who have built their teams slowly - with little need for deep pockets. The fact that they have recently been acquainted with the lower leagues is also interesting. It suggests that relegation is not the disaster it is supposed to be. And in due course, a bit of upward momentum can be quite useful.

One of the great untruths of this division is the 'yo-yo effect' of going up, coming down with parachute money - and popping back up with the benefit of all that money. That's a view that doesn't really hold water. Clubs in this division throw money away, as though it is contaminated too. So if you look at the basement you will see would-be yo yo teams such as Leicester, Coventry and Southampton vying to get relegated. - whilst coming up in the opposite direction are upwardly-mobile teams such as Plymouth, Hull and Bristol City. Soon to be joined by Swansea - and perhaps even dirty Leeds.

All things considered, next season's Division Two looks to be awash with capable teams. It appears to be a poor time to lose your captain and half your team. Given Jim Magilton's recent efforts in the transfer market, there would appear to be few grounds for optimism.

Who knows what Derby, Brum and Reading will add to the mix. With just a modicum of stability, Birmingham and Reading should be pretty resilient in this league. And Derby might surprise a few people if Paul Jewell still has what it takes. Any one of ten teams could get promoted next year. I'd say that is a healthy sign of strength - not weakness.

Canadian Club

As Jason DeVos announces that he is not only leaving Ipswich, but retiring from football, Blue Review looks at the ties which somehow seem to have emerged between Ipswich and Canada, and which are now weaker since our former skippers departure.

The somewhat emotional farewell given to Jason De Vos after the Hull game was a fitting farewell to an excellent player who was not only a fine club captain - he seemed to care about the development of what is effectively a minority sport in his own country. Whilst wishing him well it also got me thinking about the curiously strong ties between Ipswich Town and Canada that have spanned the years.

When you think of overseas stars that have graced the Portman Road turf, the strongest links are with our near neighbours from Holland. There are a whole host of fondly-remembered (and not so fondly remembered) Dutch players. From Arnold Muehren and Franz Thijssen, Romeo Zondervan and erm... Cor Ems, through to more recent, if more erratic perfomers such as Gus Uhlenbeek, Bobby Petta and Nabil Abidallah right through to the also now-sadly departed Fabian Wilnis.

It makes sense for Town to have a string of Dutch players. They are our perhaps our nearest neighbours, tend to speak excellent English and play football rather well. But Canada? This is a country where they have no national cuisine, where 'soccer' is a minority sport, where it is so cold and inhospitable that even hockey is played on ice and they speak a language that sounds strangely French and American at the same time.

I'm not sure why Ipswich Town should become the natural home of so many Canadian players. Perhaps the links have their roots in the likes of Trevor Whymark and Franz Thijssen playing for Vancouver Whitecaps. Certainly, these players would have inspired a young Frank Yallop.

It was Yallop's misfortune to be a left back at a time when Town's fortunes were going into a steep decline. But he was nothing less than wholehearted... and his superb goal in a home win over Manchester United is probably as indelibly etched in his mind as it is in mine.

Whilst appearing nothing more than a journeyman full back in his time at Portman Road, Yallop reinvented himself as a transatlantic coach of some substance, managing his national team - and winning the stateside soccer world ultra-bowl (or whatever the US league is called) before having Beckham foisted on him at Los Angeles and sinking without trace. However, at the peak of his powers, Yallop was even a credible choice to be Town's manager - and I suspect he would have been rather good at it if given the chance.

The next Canadian to surface at Portman Road was Craig Forrest - a goalkeeping giant fondly remembered for his feeble kicking ability as much for his excellent goalkeeping. Forrest too was a capable player who just happened to be around at a fairly bleak time in our history - the post-Cooper era. But he was one of the rocks that Lyall built his team of champions out of and went on to make quite a name for himself in the top division.

Indeed, those of us at Old Trafford on a particularly bleak afternoon recall Forrest's excellence as one of the principal reasons why the record premier league defeat is a mere 9-0, rather than something well into double figures.

Forrest was also a player who took his responsibilities to the club and its supporters seriously, often showing up at supporters' club functions when other players had discovered better things to do with their time.

So with a capable goalie and full back in our Canadian collection, it was not unnatural for a commanding central defender in the shape of Jason de Vos to heed his national team manager's advice and turn his back on Wigan's well-funded promotion campaign and Premiership consolidation - and throw in his lot with a destitute Town's low-budget promotion attempt..

For much of his first season, that must have seemed a reasonable decision, as Town came within an untimely Kuqi injury of promotion. However, since those heady days it's been a case of what might have been. Through it all though de Vos has seemed the very essence of a thinking footballer, with much more on his mind than a pint of bitter and the 3.40 at Newmarket on his mind. It's just a pity that he never really received the respect he deserved. Like many players, I suspect we will not realise just how effective Jason de Vos until after he has gone.

Those feelings of self-doubt that must have troubled de Vos must have also been nagging away at Jamie Peters almost from day one. His much hyped arrival never seemed to have much substance behind it - and out most recent Canadian recruit has also been by far and away the most disappointing.

I am not sure if there are any other Canadians on the distant horizon. Somehow I doubt it. Holland may the team who gave us total football - and a number of players we fondly remember with pride - but Canada too has played its part in our history. And the departure of our Canadian connection makes us just a little poorer in my mind.

Whats the point?

Its all over for another season. But inevitably, it prompts the start of the inquest. Where did we go wrong? Or was it a season of progress, building the foundations of a promotion winning side? BlueReview believes we should concentrate on the latter, rather than worrying about missing out on the play-off lottery.

So that's that for another year. I suppose many fans (not to mention, invisible owners) will be disappointed that we effectively missed out on the play-offs by one point to a team in free-fall. Somewhat frustratingly, Watford now look as though Ipswich ladies team could now beat them - yet we effectively gave them a 6 point start by being doubled by them.

But the bottom line is that after 46 games - we came up precisely one point short. We could all quote matches where that point slipped away - but then again, so could supporters of every other team in this highly competitive league. The painful lesson this season tells us is that every point counts.

I have a theory about why this division is so equal (or average, depending on your point of view). And why teams that go up, inevitably come back down. I blame the play offs. They encourage mediocrity because they are open to just about everybody. Take this season - on the last day of the season we could have come 5th - or 10th. In ye olden days, a team had to be good to get promoted. Only the top two went up. So not unnaturally, players gravitated towards the better teams. And when those teams went up - they went up on merit.

Now almost anybody can go up - and frequently they do. Once again those upstart scamps from South London, Crystal Palace, look as though they are going to nip into the top division via the play offs, for the simple reason that they have more momentum than anyone else - and are therefore better placed to win a couple of cup ties - which is effectively what the play-offs are.

Personally I am rather glad we didn't make the play-offs. I live in hope that we are actually building a team with solid foundations - and with just a bit of tinkering we could be quite a force in this division next season. That's assuming that Magilton can curb his enthusiasm for buying midfielders - and overcome his phobia about giving home-grown talent a chance. A goalie would be more than useful too.

I am not a fan of the play-offs. Being somewhat old-fashioned I think that promotion should be won on merit. It seems daft to let the 6th best team go up and punish three better teams in a league. Over the season Dean Windass and his mates are the third best team in this division - and should be granted the automatic relegation slot for next season. Unfortunately, they have Neil Warnock and Palace to contend with.

And so the season ends with a curious mix of satisfaction and what-ifs and maybes. What if we had got a central defender instead of 3 midfielders? What if Legwinski hadn't developed a strange case of BO? What if we hadn't lost our goalies? What if we had matched our home form against the teams above us with just a smidgin of away form? Or even beaten Colchester?

At about this time last season, Stoke City fans were saying 'what if...' too. You may recall they came 8th - and look where they are now. I guess Tony Pulis must have been saying 'What if we had Ricardo Fuller?' Not something that many Town fans would have relished. And the thought that Scowcroft might be lumbering around in the Premier League with Palace next season is slightly perplexing too.

There is one reason I rather hope (and expect) Palace to win the play-offs. Neil Warnock. Underneath the crusty exterior he is a good bloke. He calls a cheat a cheat. More importantly he plays young home-grown players. And it would be a salutary lesson for Magilton if Palace go up. Because, ultimately, if the season fizzles out and you still don't pick your own players - what's the point.

Has Ability- Must Try Harder

Despite mixed opinions amongst fans, there is a general consensus of opinion that the club is on the up and there has been much improvement in the side over the last year.

Blue Review questions some of the perceptions many have of where we are coming short and offers an alternative view on how the club might look to improve.

With the season poised to fizzle out, now might be a good time to assess what has gone on in this strange and somewhat dissatisfying season. It's beginning to look as though Town are going to come 8th - more or less where they have looked like they will end up all season. Pretty good some would say, me included. But others may disagree - particularly those adept at buck-passing on our new six-man board. So how will Jim Magilton fair in his end of term report?

In some quarters this season is viewed as a missed opportunity, particularly with all the nonsense that surrounded Town's pre-xmas sell-out. Perhaps that's because in a season with only one stand-out (but eminently beatable) team, the margin between success and failure in this division is closer than ever.

The unpalatable truth is that we lack a certain something that defines a promotion team and we are going to end up more or less where we deserve to be. The question is - what exactly is it that is the missing commodity - and can it be put right for next season?

This season, the difference between being on the fringes of the promotion race (well more of a promotion jog really) and the relegation trapdoor are wafer thin. After 38 games the difference between Town on the fringe of the play-offs and Leicester in the last relegation place was effectively 4 wins. Not a lot really.

Ask most Town fans where our problems lie and defence would be the almost unanimous answer. But here again, the truth is somewhat different. Our defensive record is actually just as good as West Brom and Stoke, the teams currently occupying the top two places. Curiously, Town's defensive record is a lot worse than Leicester's - which might suggest that a good defence gets you relegated, rather than promoted.

Our second major problem, according to the fans is our somewhat goal-shy attack. And indeed we do indeed lack the mythical 20-goal striker every team needs by some distance this season. But again, the stark truth tells a very different story. After 44 games we have actually scored more goals than every team in the division outside the top three - and of those, Hull have only managed one goal more than we have.

So there you have our conundrum in a nutshell. Our defence is as good as anybody in this division. Our attack is as good as anyone outside the top two. No wonder Jim Magilton buys so many midfield players.

We are of course shorter than most teams in the goalkeeping department, having lost our two to Scottish bench-warming duties so surprisingly in the transfer window. But having the much-reviled Bywater in (hopefully) temporary charge between the posts hasn't exactly been a catastrophe - more of a damp squib. If my calculations are correct we have been no better and no worse since our takeover or our somewhat dubious transfer window transfer activity. We have simply swapped a few dropped points at home for a few gained points away. On our good days we have been good - very good indeed. But there have been far too many games when we have come up just that bit short. And while it is convenient to blame the referee for such shortcomings - the buck stops with the players. Or those charged with orchestrating the way they play.

I'm not sure what that means, other than we shouldn't hold out too much hope for any close-season signings to make much difference. Unless of course Magilton comes to his senses and signs a commanding goalie.

So to sum up. In a division that is pretty competitive, Town have come up a bit short because...erm they are not competitive enough when the going gets tough. I could have put my finger on that fatal flaw after four games, rather than forty-four games. I'm pretty sure Jim Magilton did too - which might explain the bewildering changes and dubious signings. The only trouble is they made not a tad of difference.

When the three shiny suits and number crunchers allocated by Marcus Evans to look after his investment come to assess what is going on at Ipswich Town they will presumably be assessing everyone's performance and doing a review. When that happens I am not sure I would like to be in Jim Magilton's shoes. Clearly, whichever way you look at it he has had the material this season to do every bit as well as such giants of the game as Hull, Stoke, Bristol City, Watford and Palace.

Our defence is every bit as good as those teams - and so is our attack. And with at least two players for every position, our midfield should be pretty adequate too. Clearly the difference between Town and the top 6 is a coaching problem.

Like the lads at school who larked around a bit - Town have the ability, they just don't seem able to apply it as often as necessary to do well in what is effectively a pretty simple continuous assessment test. So Jim Magilton's end of term report will presumably read 'has ability must try harder'. Whether that means he's going to get the boot now or a few games into next season, only time will tell.

I doubt many Town fans would have been overly happy if their favourite bogeyman Neil Warnock had joined Town instead of Crystal Palace a year ago. But the way Warnock has shoehorned a pretty feeble Palace team into the play-offs to my mind illustrates just how easy a job football management really is. It really isn't brain surgery at all and it doesn't require money - it just requires a modicum of common sense - and patience.

Britannia Stand Player of the Season?

A theme seems to be emerging. The clubs apathy towards the supporters player of the year award seems to be having an impact on the supporters themselves. BlueReview laments a once prestigious award, whilst giving some novel suggestions for alternative awards.

So Jon Walters is our player of the year. A pretty unanimous choice really - helped by his sustained excellence for half a season - and in no small part by the complete lack of credible alternatives. It ought to be an award worth having - but seems to have lost its gravitas in recent years and this season in particular it's been a bit of a damp squib.

This peculiar and slightly absurd season kept its bizarre nature right to the end when we all trudged home after the last league game without having a hero to salute in the time-honoured way. Who was the player of the year? Jon Walters probably - but nobody knew... perhaps not even the man himself. Jon Walters got his award at a dinner sandwiched between away games at Wolves and Preston. The first I knew was a little bit of ticker tape running along the bottom of the Sky Sports news bulletin... and I am not sure they even mentioned it. And why would they?

A quick scan of past winners of the player of the year award reveals a veritable who's who of Town greats... Kevin Beattie, Terry Butcher, John Wark...and erm Trevor Putney. But in recent years it seems to have become somewhat devalued. Helped in no small part by the plethora of awards on offer, as well as the calamitous decline in our fortunes. Who won last year? Silvan Legwinski I believe... and he has disappeared off the radar without so much as a Gallic shrug. So much for rewarding sustained excellence.

I have to say straight away that I don't believe in individual awards in a team game. They strike me as a tad crass. Even the most gifted individual is nothing without his team mates. And even the most useless of players can have his moments in the spotlight. Roger Osbourne for example. That it seems to me is the very essence of a team game. And the best teams are often the ones with no obvious stars.

So to fracture team unity by singling out individuals for praise seems a tad strange and ultimately rather pointless. It appears even more bizarre when the supporters are subdivided too. OK - the players' player of the year might have a certain curiosity value. But does anybody really care what the corporate box holders think? I suspect not, probably not even the box holders themselves - let alone the player who receives the dubious accolade.

Why stop at a bunch of corporate freeloaders? Why not have a player of the year from each stand? I suspect that little innovation might lead to four different winners every year. We could also modernise the award and have the loanee of the year - both out and in, the player most ignored by Jim Magilton for no discernible reason. The Marcus Evans invisibility award for the least seen player in away games. There could be a dented, careworn colander for the most moaned at defender in our leaky defence, a rusty paella pan for the Spaniard of the year, In no time at all we could concoct enough awards so that everyone could win one.

But - and here's the point. Those awards really only mean anything if you believe in them. And by letting the home season fizzle out without celebrating a player of the year 3 matches early sort of shows nobody cares - not even the club. Players of the year really are not what they used to be.

Moans About Loans

Town fans (well, the sort who inhabit internet message boards) were agog with excitement about the possibility of a deadbeat Fulham striker joining us on loan. Why? This is the same serial underachiever whose conspicuous lack of league goals helped to get Leeds United relegated from the very division we cherish hopes of leaving in the opposite direction.

What is it about the thought of begging and borrowing unwanted and surplus players to go through the motions for Town? It's utter madness. But clutching at straws by abusing the loan system has now become a strange and indelible part of our game. It effectively means is that supporters who fondly believe themselves to be the club's keenest supporters are actually happiest seeing players who are not Town players. Surely they would be better off supporting another team?

The constant merry-go-round of loans also means the manager is repeatedly telling his own players he thinks they are not good enough, which must have a debilitating effect on team morale. Yes we are a tad goal-shy at a critical time of the season - but our strikers are hardly inadequate. If Lee and Counago stay fit and are actually given a game, both are well capable of scoring goals. At times they even look as though they are on the same wavelength. Haynes is reputedly one of the hottest prospects in this division and has already shown he is a scorer of important goals... all he needs is a run of games - not yet more dead wood ahead of him in the queue.

IF Healey was a proven scorer (like Jeffers). IF he was motivated and actually better than what we already have, it's still a big ask to expect him to instantly perform with a bunch of strangers. So what on earth is the point of demoralising players already on the books with yet another less than average signing?

The same week it was rumoured that Jordan Rhodes would make his full debut against QPR. Yet this genuinely exciting possibility raised barely a murmer of interest amongst the internet warriors. (Rightly as it happens, but only because Magilton was once again too cowardly to place real faith in real potential)

Am I the only Town fan who finds the loan system absurd and ridiculous? If Town are a prime, misguided example of every other team in the league, then every club has at least three or four players playing for someone else and just as many misfits shipped in from elsewhere playing for them. That's effectively half a team made up of somebody else's players. Wouldn't it be better if everybody bit the bullet on this and simply played their own players?

This season, we have had players marooned in such far-flung and appalling places as Brentford, Falkirk and Yeovil, rather than give them the chance to perform for a club they have been groomed for years to play for. This is in addition to perfectly adequate players like Richards who get frozen out and loaned on so that room can be made for another left footer to become the crowd's favourite boo boy.

Meanwhile the revolving door twirls and we get in players on loan to play in their stead - none of whom seem any better than those squeezed out to make way for them. It's bad enough that there is a transfer window to encourage managers to plunge in with ill-considered bids for overpriced players rather than do what they are paid for - manage what they have already got. If the transfer window is madness - the loan window is definitely one step beyond. I simply cannot see any point to it.

We live in an era where clubs buy vast amount of players they neither need, nor can possibly accommodate. In fact, counting rejects already out on loan I think Fulham have no fewer than ten strikers on their books. I'll say that again - ten strikers! And look at the good it has done them. Somewhat predictably, they are moving headlong towards relegation. All the loan system does is encourage such madness.

What good is our clutch of loan players doing us? Our borrowed goalie is universally disliked. Meanwhile Supple sits shivering on a park bench in Falkirk. Somewhere in the background is an injured Kuqi, who as he swallow-dived on to the treatment table must have been thankful that Magilton's daft quest for yet another Irish recruit floundered somewhere between the Fulham boardroom and the Sky Sports studio. And that's not counting some youngster from Manchester who turned up almost unannounced for no discernible reason.

In many ways this has been a profoundly depressing season. Despite hovering on the verge of the play-offs, with every chance of elbowing our way in when it matters, it's been strangely flat. I look back at the home game against West Brom and seem to remember a well-balanced team playing superb football to effectively outplay the league leaders. Yet Trotter, who played on the left in that game has barely kicked a ball since. The Bristol City game was another high point - and as Billy Clarke left the pitch I doubt he was thinking of Falkirk's chilly bench.

Magilton seems to be making the same mistakes that Burley made when he lost the plot so catastrophically. He's forgetting that football is team game - and a team needs just 11 players who know their role - plus five subs. Please Jim, next season, forget being the loan arranger - and play your own players.

Good Old British Phlegm

We have something of a striking crisis and spitting is the key component. Blue Review looks at why spitting causes such a furore in a sport which turns a blind eye to so many other transgressions.

Hey ho - no sooner does Pablo discover the dark art of scoring on away grounds; and in such grim and unforbidding places as Barnsley and Scunthorpe no less - then he is promptly sent off. Losing an in-form striker at such a critical time of the season is either a crisis, or a heaven-set opportunity for Rhodes or Kuqi, depending on your point of view. But, alas our striking senor is alleged to have spat on an opponent, which is a whole new ball game and guaranteed to get the hysterical and the hypocritical foaming at the mouth.

Even Jim Magilton didn't hesitate to jump straight on this particular bandwagon. If Pablo was guilty, there would apparently be stern words indeed. There is no place for such behaviour in football apparently. In the surrealistic world of football there are a number of 'crimes' which are frowned upon, with face-bound phlegm globules being pretty near the top of the pile.

Call me anti-social, but I have never shared this gobbophobic point of view - and the mass hysteria it generates never fails to bemuse me. Football, after all is a sport where all the protagonists are totally addicted to spitting. Every close up of any player on television is invariably greeted with an airborne jet of spittle. If you are lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) you can even rejoice in players clearing their nostrils as well as their mouths in glorious uncouth and glutinous detail.

So in a sport where spitting is obviously mandatory at every opportunity, why is it such a sin to direct your gob full of saliva into the face of an opponent? It's not exactly violent, or even painful. In many ways it is a highly appropriate gesture of contempt. And in the great scheme of things, being hit by saliva is not exactly a career-threatening transgression after all. If you were given the choice between having your leg virtually amputated below the knee without anaesthetic by a lumbering Birmingham defender, or worse still, Ashley Cole, or receive a face-full of pre-digestive fluids from a mild-mannered Spaniard, which would you chose?

This phobia against saliva is even more bizarre when taken in the context of a sport where vile and constant, cynical cheating is endemic. From primary school age onwards, players are urged to cheat at every opportunity. That cheating may initially take subtle forms, disputing every free kick, picking up the ball when you have kicked it out and taking a throw in etc etc. In the professional game, there is so much blatant cheating going on, it sometimes appears that referees have given up refereeing - which probably explains why players go bezerk if referees have the temerity to blow their whistle.

So it is that at every free kick and corner, you see defenders virtually rugby-tacking their opponents, every single time. Pushing and shirt-holding is endemic, as is pretending it wasn't you who put the ball out of play. It even appears patently unmasculine to not steal ten yards at throw ins. And of course, referees are abused and treated with absolute contempt at will by pampered morons who have no respect for authority in any way shape or form.

And then there is diving. Ahh, yes diving. Another heinous crime that has even apparently sane managers going apoplectic with righteous indignation when they suffer at the hands of this form of cheating that has latterly been labelled 'simulation'.

It is of course only slippery foreigners who dive - like the loathsome Ronaldo or Robert Pires, gifted protagonists of this darkest of dark arts. It was Pires who memorably tripped himself up in such sublime style for a match-winning penalty that you just knew he had to practice it as part of the training routine. Except Wenger wasn't quite so righteously smug a year or two later when Rooney collapsed in less artful, but equally well-practised style to end Arsenal's season-plus unbeaten run a few years back.

I could go on. Michael Owen has made diving an art form - yet we love it, particularly when he does it to win penalties against Argentina. Diving is far from new - if anything, it's the cynical cheating Brits that have shown the slippery foreigners how to dive. Remember Francis Lee anybody? Or (ahem) Eric Gates?

So diving is a bit iffy, especially if done by foreigners - but holding is perfectly OK. As is pushing and shoving. In punditry parlance, that is six of one and half a dozen of the other. Even vicious, pre-meditated violence is perfectly acceptable. Yes, if a leg or two does get broken it is unfortunate - but hey it's a contact sport Brian. Deliberately injuring an opponent, inflicting a career or life threatening injury has somehow always seemed quite manly - and is practised not by cheats, but by 'hard men'.

A well-placed elbow still inflicts serious injury - but we now know ramming your elbow into somebody's face is essential for getting height. In a year or two, the psychotic leg-breaking lunge will also presumably be excused on the basis that it is necessary to 'get momentum' or some such rubbish.

So maybe Pablo shouldn't worry. Even if he did gob in somebody's face, maybe it is an essential pre-requisite to making your point? I'm sure all it takes to make spitting an acceptable part of the game is to get a well known practitioner of gobbing to say how essential it is, as an insightful piece of punditry. If Chelsea snaffle Frank Rijkaard as their manager - that could even be as soon as next year.

Must Win Games

Charlton was a must win game. And glory-be we won it - promptly sailing above them on goal difference. So we are right back in the promotion frame again. Until our next "must-win game" doesnt go quite so well. Probably as soon as Scunthorpe at the weekend. When, if we lose and Charlton win or draw, they will just as quickly go back above us again. And our season will be over- again. Well, at least for another week.

Trouble is, with almost half the division joining us in the promotion play-off frame, it's not so much how Town perform from now on - it's how the other teams do. And by their very nature, most of those teams will not be winning - especially if they are busy playing each other.

Most football managers abide by the old cliché of taking each match as it comes. That's a strange point of view in a league season which is a marathon, not a sprint, to dust off another well-worn cliché. If you are trying to win promotion, surely it is better to focus on the long term? Taking each match as it comes probably explains why we focus so much on the next game and build it up out of all proportion to its actual meaning.

So it was we had another must-win game the previous Tuesday against Barnsley, in holiday mode after their FA Cup successes. The general consensus was probably that we only had to turn up to claim our rightful three points. Alas, a brisk breeze and some comedy defending sent us spinning to one of the more depressing defeats of the season, promptly resulting in much woe and navel-gazing. The more hysterical amongst us would have you believe our season ended then and there.

But the truth is - virtually everybody else slipped up that night too. So in the great scheme of things it didn't matter one iota. Before the game we were on the edge of the promotion play-offs. We were out-fought and out-thought by a team half a division below us - and ended the night precisely where we started - on the fringe of the play-offs.

The same would have been more or less true had we lost our must-win game against Charlton. Yes, Charlton would have been temporarily out of sight, six points ahead of us - but we'd still be on the fringe of the play-offs, chasing that 6th place that seems destined to go to a pretty unsung team such as Palace, Plymouth or Hull. It also seems likely to be won on goal difference, let alone a single point.

If we assume that automatic promotion is now out of sight - our only realistic aim is the play-offs. Which is all of three points away - and probably will be in a month's time - irrespective of how we do. It's unrealistic to expect Town to suddenly win, win, win and sprint for the finishing line. Because the truth is, since Christmas, our form has been patchy at best. And let's face it - we're not that strong a team. It just happens that there are around ten other clubs all in the same boat - and all equally incapable of pushing their way on board the promotion express.

The truth is, if we want to grab the poisoned chalice of a place in the play offs and another tilt at the Premier League, all we have to do is find a bit of form and get three points more than Hull or Plymouth over the remaining few matches. In all honesty that is not too much of an ask. All those must win games roughly translates into winning one more game than they do.

There is no such thing as a must win game in this league. Not really. All you must do is end up with more points or a better goal difference than the teams around you. Not on any given Saturday (or cold, wet Tuesday night) - but at the end of the season. Then there really are a couple of must win games. The play-offs. But the sad truth is - you don't even have to win those either. A draw will do very nicely as long as you can take penalties.

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.

Our Academy is Failing

Here's this week's trivia question. Which is the worst team in the league at developing their own players? Chelsea would be a good guess as I think they have only produced John Terry since the inception of the Premier League. But Ipswich are currently running them pretty close.

Which given the contrast between Chelsea's Russian zillions and our recent penniless history is curious indeed. When Sheepshanks destroyed the clubs finances and took us into Admin, the academy was regarded as a crown jewel - and ring-fenced, despite eye-watering annual running costs, quoted at £1million plus per annum.

It seemed a glib lie at the time, because Burley's magnificently inept relegation team frequently had more products of the Norwich youth scheme (Andy Marshall) in it than Town's. But with Bent and Ambrose emerging, Westlake and Matt Richards looking promising, not to mention Dean Bowditch, it's easy to see how the hype could cover up reality - and so the myth of the young guns began.

Fast forward a few years and if you made the journey to Stoke and scanned the team sheet you might have noticed that the only home-grown player in the team was Bam Bam. And he was only there because Leicester blocked Magilton's move for one of his old Irish mates. With all the will in the world, it's stretching a point to call Naylor a young gun, because Bam Bam joined the club back in the days of John Lyall.

I only mention this because April will see the third anniversary of our FA Youth Cup triumph. So now is the time that golden generation should be forcing their way into the team and providing its spine for years to come. You might guess that Theo Walcott was in the Southampton team that April evening - but can you identify the trophy-winning pillars of our future? Here's the team that were much hyped as Town's glittering next generation. Supple, Krause, Collins, Casement, Synnott; Craig, Lordan (Hammond 82), Trotter (Upson 105), Moore, Haynes (Sheringham 71); Knights. Subs not used: Reynolds, Ainsley

Supple we know has been exiled to Falkirk of all places - and Haynes is sometimes given a game when Magilton is feeling rash. But otherwise the first team cupboard is bare. Even the hugely promising Garvan has now been squeezed out by Magilton's bulk midfield purchases in the transfer window.

Next on the horizon is a lad called Jordan Rhodes who has scored goals at every level he has played at. Not that it will do him much good however, because all the talk coming out of Portman Road is not the huge promise of the latest in our youth production line - it is David Nugent on loan. No matter - perhaps Rhodes can be loaned to Gretna.

Which to my mind is profoundly sad. Nugent may well be a fine player - and a useful goalscorer to have on board to try and sneak a play-off place. But what's the point? Why have a bloke who Portsmouth bough on a whim and now want to discard before they have to pay the latest instalment on his fee? Wouldn't it be better to give Jordan Rhodes a few games instead, if Pablo is firing blanks?

We are supposed to be a club that produces its own players - but the current manager appears to lack the faith to play them or the patience to let them learn and develop in the only real place they can learn - out on the pitch for us.

The current merry-go-round of surplus players is little short of a farce. Town have a perfectly adequate goalie in Supple - but loan him out and promptly loan not one, but two in. Ah - I hear you say... we can't afford to play young players because we need to get in the play-offs. And if you lack faith in your own players, that is an easy route to take. The trouble is, there will never be a good time to blood players. If we went up - well they wouldn't be ready for the Premier League would they.? Or they would get depressed by the relentless grind of losing week in, week out. And if we miss out this year - well we can't play them next year either - because we'll be going for promotion again (we hope).

Now admittedly I am glossing over a salient fact here. Because Town were skint they had to sell their prized assets. One even had to go to pay the administrator's hotel bill. But that was five years ago - something clearly isn't working. It may be that the Academy system is patently flawed as it is geared more to big city clubs rather than small market town in a rural area adjacent to the North Sea. It may be that managers are too cautious and fans too impatient. Everybody wants instant solutions.

Maybe young players are like London buses - you wait ages then a few come along together. But the fact remains - in no way is the academy justifying its huge running costs. If the administrators had closed the academy forthwith five years ago - Falkirk would have been short of two substitutes and so would we. That's hardly a ringing endorsement. We could probably have paid off the £8million debt with the money saved too. So far from being our future, you could argue that the Academy has in fact destroyed it.

If I was one of those three Marcus Evans lackies making a root and branch review of my boss's new toy I'd be thinking - why have an academy costing £1million a year if I can get players in on loan from other teams that don't want to play their academy players either?

It was ill-advised loans that destroyed the club's finances and reduced us to the lowest point in our history. In many ways, ill-advised loans are now threatening our future too.

Support your global brand

The recent embarrassing own goal from the Premier League when they outlined their outrageous plans for taking games global on the pitch as well as on the television wasn't just breathtaking in its shameless greed and total indifference to supporters - it caused outrage the world over.

Not in the addled brain of Sheepshanks however, who once again demonstrated his unique ability to appear arrogant, stupid and out of touch with reality all in the same mindless sound bite.

Being Sheepshanks though, he wasn't content just to appear foolish - he went a step further in openly showing his contempt for the thought processes of Town fans by telling us that Marcus Evans wants to develop Ipswich into a global brand. Bizarrely, painful slaps in the face for Town fans didn't stop there last week - we were promptly treated to another one, courtesy of Danny Haynes magnificently accidental goal at Palace.

All in all an interesting week. Not only did Town beat a strangely listless Palace with something to spare, they livened up a routine home win over Blackpool with one of the most bizarre goals you or I could ever wish to see. And while Blackpool's goal was both surreal and funny - it also showed Magilton might be better advised to make his next signing from a Primary School. School kids after all realise you have to play to the whistle.

Still let's look at the plus points. Two away wins on the spin - and one against a principle challenger for a play-off spot. Why the sudden turnaround? New signings of course. Not necessarily - I suggest. I think it is more do to with a bit of fine-tuning in the very area where the one signing we actually needed wasn't made - defence. Is it any coincidence that our defence has tightened with the return of Bam Bam?

Richard Naylor is probably the very antithesis of Sheepshanks' vision for a global brand. A home-grown journeyman striker with dodgy knees who has stuck to his guns despite being dropped more times than Sheepshanks has talked garbage. Worse still, Burley tried to drive him out, even sending him on loan to Milwall. But despite plumbing such depths at his one and only club, Naylor has stuck around - and metamorphosised under Royle from journeyman striker into a journeyman defender who is more than a bit handy at corners.

The return of Naylor to partner de Vos is not one that I would normally be too enthusiastic about. Both appear to have the speed and turning circles of oil tankers. But both also have something of a combative attitude that more than makes up for any deficit in innate ability and lack of mobility. Maybe the move of Bruce to right back is also something of a masterstroke.

The other major surprise (to me at least) has been the form of our Macedonian Gerrard who came to Town by way of Russia, Turkey - and Carrow Road. Maybe global branding is alive and well at Portman Road after all.

Which brings me back to the global branding on offer at the weekend. It was FA Cup weekend - the greatest knock out cup competition in the world. But alas for the hype merchants of the BBC, the FA Cup was also an unwanted prelude to this week's 'Champions League' games. So we got the farce of half a Manchester United playing half an Arsenal - whilst being expected to enthuse that gallant Barnsley had somehow overcome a half-Liverpool team that had flirted with an early exit in both previous rounds.

Interestingly though, it wasn't the supreme indifference of Liverpool to their own paying public that caught my eye. It was the absurdity of the Barnsley team that was largely overlooked. The hero of the tykes was a West Browm goalie who was only playing because Barnsley had somewhat carelessly loaned their goalie to warm our bench. Even stranger, they had to flood the Barnsley team with Barnsley players - because a new signing and two further loan players were cup-tied.

And so there in one glorious hotchpotch was the magic of the Cup. Liverpool reserves lining up against a team that through sheer force of circumstance had to field their own players (well ten of them anyway). And glory-be, Barnsley players actually seemed to care about playing for Barnsley. Well - someone has to I suppose.

Which brings me back to Sheepshanks' addled vision of our future. If all goes well - and we make the play-offs- what then? Well it's a big ask for Town to actually win the play-offs - but if we do, what then? Well first and foremost, bucket loads of money pours in, to be quickly siphoned off who knows where. But having got the important business out of the way first - what then? Well, we get the glamour of games against Reading, Bolton, Wigan and Middlesborough. And in European weeks - a chance to see some reserves from the 'big 4'.

And therein lies the magnitude of Sheepshanks' delusions (or madness). Because to be a global brand, Ipswich have to dominate their market. Very few markets have more than two successful brands. So that means overtaking Manchester United and Arsenal, not just for years - but for decades. Hopefully in the dressing room, minds will be a little bit clearer and more focused. I'd be happy to believe for a month or two at least, we can catch Stoke City. And with Naylor at the heart of things it wouldn't surprise me if we can go one better than Scunthorpe - and actually hold on to a lead at Stoke.

Premier League- Fantasy Football or Nightmare Reality?

Even after the frustrating experience of the Watford game, Town are still ideally placed to challenge for promotion. IF they can win a few games away and maintain their home form. Frankly, both those events are big asks. First of all our form has dipped somewhat since the club was sold.

Secondly, Jim Magilton's team selections have now evolved beyond the eccentric and are bordering on the perverse. But never mind, for anyone with a fiver to burn, let alone £8million, Town are still a reasonable bet to make the play offs.

Then what? Most Town fans probably aspire to seeing our club back in the top division. I don't. In many ways I much prefer the football league. And I am not alone. The unpalatable truth for hype merchants is that the crowds attending football league games are invariably higher than those attending the Premier League. No that you'd know this from the media coverage of course.

This might sound like heresy but there are all manner of reasons why the Championship is a much better (and infinitely more wholesome) place than the Premier League. Despite the evidence of my own eyes on Saturday, I don't really believe the quality of football is any better in the Premiership. In fact I am pretty sure it isn't. But I am totally convinced that the Premiership is already disaster for true football fans.

Putting aside the football on offer - OK, Saturday's experience was pretty dire. But then so is the Prem. Maybe you disagree and are convinced that the Premiership is awash with fantastic footballers playing sublime football? In which case I ask you to remember the last time we were there. And if a few Marcus Stewart goals are still distorting your memory - try picturing the time before that. Premier League football is just like any other football - good sometimes, appalling sometimes - and in the middle most times. The middle is often pretty bad. And the bad is truly dreadful.

But (aside from the eye-watering cost) by far the worst thing about Premier League football is that it is so darn inconvenient for supporters. Absurd kick offs timed to suit a Sky audience which surely hovers around zero for some games are now de-rigeur. And therein lies the problem. By and large the majority of football followers in this country hate the Premier League and loathe its overrated, posturing 'stars'. The UK TV audience is stagnating - and is being rapidly overtaken by the overseas TV audience, which is not just increasing fast - it is increasing exponentially. There is serious money to be made.

There was a bit of an outcry last week when it emerged that plans are afoot for Premier league games to be played abroad. Why? We are talking about clubs in foreign ownership, probably managed by foreigners and largely filled with foreign players. The only real surprise is that it took them so long to admit what has looked inevitable for some time. Soon hopefully, nearly all be played abroad.

Already the kick-off times are scheduled to suit a TV audience. Worse still, unless you are a bit of an addict and really must watch football in the worst part of the ground - you can't go to any away games. And even the home games have a habit of clashing with Sunday lunch or odd times on Saturday or even Monday. It really would be so much more convenient to have the game played in Shanghai.

This cynical indifference to fans is fuelled by money. Fans are often very happy to be ripped off - and even seem to glory in being loosely associated with somebody else's borrowed money. And if you disagree, count the overpriced replica shirts and think back a few weeks to the unbridled joy that saw Town slip into offshore ownership in exchange for a good each-way bet on grabbing some premiership millions.

We might laugh at those miserable scousers bemoaning their debt-ridden American owners - and laughably seeking to get into bed with the Kuwait Investment Office. (Try getting drunk in Kuwait lads - and count the women at your first home game in the Gulf in a couple of years time). But we're no better off ourselves. Nobody knows where we might be playing our fantasy home games were we to be in the Prem in a couple of years. The Cayman Islands or Lichtenstein presumably.

OK maybe teenage Japanese and Korean girls can (like certain England managers) be fooled for years into believing that Beckham is still a capable footballer. But will they really be queuing up to see Wigan play Reading? Or Middlesborough play Ipswich? No they want to see Ronaldo. Or at a pinch, Torres or Fabregas.

The idea that Birmingham v Bolton has any international cachet at all is plainly preposterous. Yet greedy short-sighted chairmen of the also-rans in the Premiership have been sucked in by the illusion of short-term bucks on offer. If it wasn't actually happening before our eyes it would be quite funny. It's pretty funny anyway.

No - to my mind the championship is infinitely preferable to the Premier League on a number of levels - not least because at the moment there are no plans in place to play games in China or Japan.

I loathe the Premier League and all it stands for. I find it ludicrous that clubs are allowed to drift into foreign, off-shore or dubious ownership, no matter how unsavoury those owners are. I find it laughable that Premiership teams are overflowing with foreign players and that your league position is reputedly dictated by how much money you throw away, rather than how well your club is run.

This situation is especially absurd on European football nights, where I am expected to be enthusiastic if Arsenal for example beat a French team with fewer Frenchman, or Liverpool take on a Spanish team in 'another great night for English football'. I couldn't care less - and in point of fact I much prefer it when the 'English' team loses. I suspect most football fans feel the same way.

I detest the way money has distorted and corrupted our game. OK, so the Evans takeover and amusing goings on at Loftus Road show that the Championship is now fair game for chancers too. But the likes of Bristol City - and maybe next season Swansea - continue to show that good teams can be built and prosper on a far from level playing field - in the short term at least.

Which brings me to the real reason for this rant. No, not Watford outmuscling and out-intimidating Town - we can after all conveniently blame the referee for that. It's where Watford are heading - and where we hope to go too, that disillusions me. When we were a busted flush, whimsical thoughts of a return to the Premier League were pure fantasy. Now they appear a bit of a nightmare.

Hallelujah!!

OK so Hillsborough Saturday February 2nd 2008 may not quite echo down the years with the same resonance as winning the league, FA Cup or UEFA Cup in the proud annals of Ipswich Town history. But if you were there....

... and you felt that all-but-forgotten smug satisfaction that comes with ambling through dark side streets looking for your car, weaving through gaggles of depressed supporters moaning in Yorkshire accents - well THAT away win seemed pretty good at the time.

In fact, after some fairly uninspiring road trips already clocked up this season and some frankly rather bizarre transfer activity in a hectic transfer window, a relatively trouble-free win against a fairly feeble Owls outfit was not just very welcome - it will hopefully go down as the turning point in Town's season.

As Jim Magilton so eloquently and bizarrely put it - three points away may well be a monkey off the lads' back. An interesting point that - and if true, might signal the way forward from now on. I have to say that I had been somewhat puzzled as to the reasons behind the stark contrast between our home and away performances. Simultaneously having the division's best home and worst away records seemed to my mind indicate that something fairly fundamental was wrong away from home.

But no, apparently the team wasn't disorganised and clueless away, nor even suffering from collective travel sickness. We now know those cheeky chaps were just monkeying around. OK it was a great joke while it lasted. Let's leave the monkeys at home from now on lads.

So assuming we are monkey-free from now on, what does the future hold? Hopefully, no banana skins in next Saturday's home game against Watford next on the agenda, one hopes that three points away won't be hotly followed by three points dropped at home. And this is what lies at the heart of Town's season from now on. In theory we really don't have to improve very much at all to get promoted - just play as well as a mid-table club away from home. It can't be that difficult can it?

Well yes - as it happens. If you bet on football matches you probably study statistics quite closely. And one of the great truisms of football statistics is that things happen in clusters. So for example teams don't win, lose, win lose - they win a few lose a few. Players don't score in every game (unless they are called Ronaldo) they score a few then go through a phase when they literally can't hit a barn door. So statistically at least, Town are 'certain' to drop points at home from now on. In effect they have been overachieving at home and under-achieving away.

So strangely, the reason that Town dropped out of the play-off positions recently wasn't the abysmal away record. It was costly draws which meant dropped points at home. But why? You see it's the reason behind Town dropping points at home (and away) that intrigues me. For the life of me I can't fathom what's going on in Magilton's mind when he's picking the team. Yes he has a huge squad to choose from, with at least two people of similar ability in every position (including on-loan goalkeeping). But do we really need to drop our leading scorer quite so often. Or play our would-be player of the year on the left where his form has dipped alarmingly? And just how many monkeys has poor old Harding got on his back - he seems to be the scapegoat for everything.

If you take my theory of a baffled Jim Magilton to its logical conclusion, the raft of new signings will confuse him even more. I can think of at least 2 million reasons (possibly more) why Norris's place is safe. But I can foresee a time fairly soon when a Macedonian who's name I can't even begin to spell will 'need time to adjust to the pace of English football' and Quinn will need 'resting'.

But let's be thankful for small mercies - and cherish that away win. Best to quietly forget for now that the Owls have been losing to anybody and everybody just recently - for now is a time to look onwards (and hopefully) upwards. Well for a week or two at least.

So for now pardon me if I don't expect a triumphant charge up the table as our fresh set of midfielders re-energises our stuttering strike force and protects our leaky defence. It may happen, it may not. I'm not even holding my breath for an inspirational loan signing.

You see to my mind, Town are so close to touching distance of the promised land that we didn't really need a raft of signings. We need a shed load of consistency. And if Magilton tries stability as a cunning plan to go with our re-invigorated midfield, then I won't just be singing Hallelujah - I could be singing in the Premier League.

Players come, players go

So that was Neil Alexander. A surprise signing perhaps- and very much a surprise exit. After Plug chose to warm the bench at West Ham rather than play football at Portman Road- the fact that a chilly bench at Ibrox is more inviting than keeping goal for us comes as yet another reminder that we are currently a long way from the big time that most fans yearn for. Or maybe average goalies are just plain greedy.

With many Town fans expecting £12million worth of rabbits out of hats following our bizarre takeover by an invisible man, the transfer window has proved somewhat interesting to say the least. Whilst most of us felt a central defender or two and maybe a striker, or even someone to fill the aching void on the left were urgent priorities, (if we were actually allowed to spend any of the alleged £12million), we seem to have been inundated with midfielders and lost our goalie.

Quite how Jim will fit all these midfielders in the team is perhaps a question even Marcus Evans might be interested in. Whilst the thought of singing 'there's only one Velice Sumulikoski!' is mildly entertaining, I have to say I am expecting him to be more Marco Holster than Steve Gerrard. But let's not be too hasty - and I gather his wife is rather gorgeous.

I must admit my heart sank when smarmy Sheepshanks said we were negotiating for an 'international.' I rather suspected after the damp squib of the Quinn signing our next major coup would be a seasoned Andorran international perhaps - or maybe the kingpin of the Falkland Islands' defence. The truth is perhaps even more depressing. The Macedonian Gerrard sounds all to much like another Slovenian million dollar man to me.

Even more bizarrely, his rumoured position sounds very much like that of Norris and a certain Frenchman - and if I was Garvan I'd begin to wonder if my future was looking a tad rosier away from Portman Road too. But hey - all this is in the future. And let's not forget our ex-Sheffield Utd reserve - who I suppose can actually play on the left... maybe almost as well as Williams.

But I digress. There was a time when you could form a sort of bond with players - but so many come and go now with such bewildering speed, that the team is becoming a revolving door twirling with ever increasing speed as players move on, often for the simple reason they don't seem to get much of a chance or simply run down their contracts (inserting handy little clauses or via dubious loan deals.

Jamie Peters is an interesting case in point. Much hyped for no discernible reason prior to his arrival - there was even a somewhat embarrassing petition organised lest he sign for mighty Milwall instead. The fact that he wasn't and may well never be very good never seemed to matter very much. And so off he goes to Yeovil - where I rather hope he proves Jim Magilton (and me) wrong.

The point I am trying to make is that for years we have overloaded our team (I hate the word squad) with very average players who offer no more than what we already have - clearly to the detriment of our own youth system. And having established that they are pretty useless they drift away. On the rare occasions that they turn out (surprisingly) to be better than anticipated, they are invariably off even quicker to a team that can pay them more money.

Norris our much-hyped (and much over-valued) No.1 transfer target is now the most recent case in point. I know I have seen him play because I have checked my programmes - and yes he was indeed on the field at Ipswich v Plymouth games I have seen. But I don't remember him at all. Which led me to think initially he might not be that good really. ( I sure hope so for the money we are paying - at the rumoured £3million he is worth 3/8ths of the entire club - surely the most expensive player in football history).

But here's the thing - we already know he treats contracts with contempt and will probably want to leave as soon as more money is on the table. This doesn't auger well if say in 6 month's time Crystal Palace (or even Plymouth) get promoted and come knocking on Town's door.

There's nothing new in any of this of course. Players have always come and gone. They just seem to be moving in and out with ever increasing rapidity - unless their name is Dean Bowditch. But for a number of years now, I haven't felt able to name Town's 'first team'. Rather worryingly, I doubt Jim Magilton can either - despite all the recent comings and goings.

Locked in a debtors prison

Ever since Town went collectively insane after one mind-blowing year in the prem, the club has been trapped inside a prison of its own making. We¿ve been literally suffocating under an unsustainable mountain of debt. A debt so vast, it not only stripped us of a generation of good players. It ultimately stripped the club of its will to live.

As 2007 ground on, the club was at such a low ebb that we were no longer even bothering to pay the interest - let alone repay the capital. And the 'for sale' sign that had been hoisted over Portman Road years previously was being frantically waved with ever increasing vigour.

So deep was the hole that Town had dug themselves into that there appeared no escape. Apart from the one pointed out to the club by an opportunist vulture that had been circling any number of wannabee football clubs - the Marcus Evans Group. The solution appeared so odd, so illogical, that seemed scarcely credible and contrary to the best interests of the club. Yet the directors apparently agreed it was a sensible way out.

Well we think they did - not many of them have been too vocal in public - apart of course from Mr Sheepshanks. So, strangely, the very people whose solemn duty it was to act in the club's best interests seemed to champion the Marcus Evans Group approach which seemed so clearly to be against the club's best interests. When the details of the offer were made public - it seemed little more than scandalous. In effect Town swapped an £8million debt for a £32 million debt - and sold their soul at the same time. And nobody seemed remotely concerned.

Even now, a month since Town sold out to an invisible man, I still can't understand how or why it happened. The facts bear repeating one more time. Town's suffocating £32million debt had been written down to just £8million. Whilst that might be a lot of money to you and I - it is reasonably small beer to a club that could in theory get promoted to the Premier League with just a bit of fine tuning.

Let's look at £8million in close up. One of Town's board could use £8million in firelighters - let alone use it to prop up a football club he was duty-bound to look after. Another, Holly Bellingham was in the process of selling a majority share in her company for £55million. So £8million was certainly a figure she could have helped raise. Yet she exited stage left from Town's board without even a whimper.

£8million is even a figure that could have been easily raised by Town fans. If we accept that there are at least 24,000 regular fans... that is only a £333 contribution from each and every one of us to wipe out Town's debt once and for all. Not in exchange for meaningless shares to fund Finidi George's pay off - but a unique chance to wipe Town's slate clean and share in something good and tangible that would guarantee a fresh start on a level playing field.

Admittedly, in the past, when Sheepshanks has gone cap in hand to supporters for meaningless share issues to keep Town afloat, he's been largely (and very sensibly) ignored. But those risible share issues were just throwing money into a bottomless pit of Sheepshanks' creation in exchange for utterly worthless shares. This time it could have been oh so different - and structured not as shares but as membership.

But it wasn't - and our club has been handed over as an investment vehicle to a faceless investment arm of an over-hyped junket company of debateable worth fronted by an invisible man without so much as a whimper. The sums of money involved are relatively tiny - even the reputed £12million put into the club to stabilise is spin. Not one penny can be spent without a nod from three faceless suits. I say it again - the club was sold under very, very dubious circumstances with very few if any alternatives being aired for a mere £8million.

So now we face up to an unknown future as an 'investment' of someone who refuses to be seen, whilst on the face of it being run by an utter incompetent who seemingly cannot bear not to be seen. In an industry where brash American soccer enthusiasts, alleged arms dealers, third world despots and assorted riff-raff from eastern Europe are queuing up to be lavish their ill-gotten gains on third rate footballers this is strange indeed.

As the AGM draws near I live in hope that one or two voices might be raised about the very strange circumstances Town now find themselves reduced to. Although the hype would have you believe our £32 million debt has vanished and the club is 'in the money', the exact opposite is very much the case. We still owe £32million - the only difference is that it is not to a financial institution with tangible assets and known business practices. Hardly a big step forward.

And we still don't have any money. Last year, we were being run so recklessly that we managed to rack up another £2million of debt whist not paying interest on our debts. That now has to change - which means tightening the purse strings. The only tangible difference I can see from the restructure is that 3 suits will seek approval from elsewhere if Town want to buy paper clips in future, let alone an overpriced midfield trundler from Plymouth Argyle.

We're still very much locked in a debtor's prison of our own making. Only this time we threw away the key.