While Mick is off the radar until September , the spotlight is now firmly on Marcus I have been quite hesitant in the past about criticising him because I will always be grateful for him saving our club However, at the finish of next season, the relegated premier clubs will receive up to £80 million(is that figure correct?) in parachute payments. This is going to cause such an advantage to these teams that the lesser teams like Ipswich will not have a hope in hell in competing for promotion This makes next season probably the most important season the town has ever had Quite simply we MUST get promoted It is up to ME to supply the funds in the millions to ensure we get a fighting chance At this moment in time it doesn't matter about MM because as much as a lot of us hate it, he's here to stay, no this is all about Marcus, without his backing, if we fail next season then I think we will never go up, so it's got to be all or nothing NOW I know nothing about Webster but reading you guys write up he doesn't sound too bad and if the money quoted(I believe it was half a million) then this is a positive step, but it must not end there. Marcus needs to spend up to 10million if necessary This could be the last time the town fights for promotion This is, without doubt, the biggest season in the towns history Don't you dare let us down Marcus, we are watching and we demand action
Yorkie...every season seems to be the season we must go up.....I think that the Clubs receiving parachute payments or those with frivolous owners do have an advantage I believe that however much money you throw at a championship team there is a ceiling in how good they can get and the quality of player they can attract, I admit you get the odd mercenarie prem quality player that is prepared to play championship football for premier league money.
A tad melodramatic yorkie. You will still see teams make the play offs and/or get promoted without parachute money. Maybe we'll get lucky one day and have a bunch of kids come through at the same time who feature in the first team. I'm certainly not going to buy into the idea that the only teams with a chance of promotion are those receiving parachute payments.
So what you are saying is, there is no need for heavy investment, no need to compete with other teams who finished above us this season, all we have to do is hope we get lucky one day with the kids My god you really have bought into the MM and ME strategic blueprint for the future of this club haven't you
No I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that I don't believe that only those with PP will have a chance of promotion. There are other ways to build a successful team without spending obscene amounts of cash, the academy being one of them. Smart investment will definitely help our cause, I'm not debating that, but I don't see money as being the be all and end all for the championship. It's not that I've "bought into the strategy" but more that I understand we aren't going to spend ridiculous fees trying to get promoted. I look at Derby throwing wads at it and wonder how long they'll be able to keep doing it.
There surely has to be a middle way here, as SD so rightly says Derby have spent possibly £50M in cold blood over the last 2 seasons and still lost at home to us and missed out on promotion again, Middlesborough have gone large over the last 2 seasons and achieved Prem status, Burnley and Hull had the money from PPs so no problem there. Yorkie has a point in as much as MM got his fingers burnt a few seasons ago but that cant be the reason we never spend again and continue to sign up free transfers and hope we unearth a diamond or two, to get promoted a team needs some quality in vital positions and quality costs money, so we all know where we are lacking and I assume MM does as well and has informed ME so as Yorkie said it really is down to Evans to decide where we are going, so do we want to compete? do we want to invest to try and get a huge return, or do we just continue along the same path and hope we strike it lucky? Over to you ME.
We finished 7th with an injury ravaged squad, I don't think ME will feel he needs to throw millions at it. I do think that he will start to invest in one or two players per window though, as well as a couple freebies. I can totally understand why we didn't rush out and get more creativity in January just because our players were injured. It's a short term fix and you end up paying the wages for more players than you really need just because you wanted to fill the void caused by a two month injury to one of the lads, for example. The lack of an emergency loan window will call for a slightly different strategy now too. We'll need to ensure that we have adequate cover for positions going into the season because we won't be able to bring somebody in in the event of an injury. This could see us invest that little bit more come the summer dealings.
There are similarities in the fans' discontent this season to that of Magilton's last season in 2009. Disappointing football and falling short of where we felt we should be with the fans then were calling for us to invest and/or change manager... As we know ME threw millions at the squad only for it to go backwards. I can't see him doing that again. I know it is tedious (much like the debate over our strategy) but I think our approach over the past couple of seasons has been very sensible (also a case of needs, must). We have built a stable squad with a long term plan, which we can add a couple of players each season to keep the team developing. The issue has been that we have not always added more quality. Last season being a prime example (Oar, AMN, Toure etc.) but have a core group of players that we can atleast add too, rather than try to pull together a team from scratch as we operated from 2009 - 2013 I agree that this is an important summer (but then isn't every summer) as I think it was clear that we didn't improve (enough) from last season and I think the signing of Webster at least shows the appetite from both Mick and ME to recruit players that can provide a different skill set to the mold that we have been so used to. I for one am excited for this summer as I think we will finally start to see a strong Mick McCarthy side that defends resolutely but also now attacks with more intent and creativity.
Agreed Scowey but the only problem with that policy is that every season that passes where you don't add a quality player or two suddenly means that we are looking for 5 or 6 quality players, a rolling policy of signing a decent couple of players every Summer is ideal for improvement but will Evans do it?
And so it brings me back to saying we may get lucky with the academy supplying us with a couple of quality players for free, combine that with a couple of paid transfers and we could be looking at a strong team. We've got a few young central midfielders and defenders on the books already so I think we should be looking for wingers primarily this summer. I don't agree with scowey saying we didn't improve enough last season, it was just one of those unfortunate campaigns and I think we would've done much better without the injuries.
Now the dust settled I think we were let down mostly by Murphy not getting near his previous seasons goal tally.... ..I said at the time and I think it is now clear we should have cashed in when his stock was high....and invested in a younger striker to compliment Sears. I think and hope that Dozzell will be a regular first team starter next season....and also if the Webster deal is what is being reported then I can't see him not being a starter......so would see one of the current CB's on their way as Berra Smith or Chambers won't want to play second fiddle.
Sears playing out wide for the majority of his pitch time didn't help the goals for column either, that's why we need to bring proper widemen in.
Selling Murphy is a difficult one to call. He was on fire and we all hoped he'd replicate it this season and we would've been mad to sell. Saying that, I would prefer to sell a player like Murphy in his thirties who was hot property than one of our young prospects to balance the books. Nobody could've foreseen how the season panned out but I think it was the right decision to keep him at the time. It may have taken a big chunk of his transfer fee to find a replacement, seems a bit pointless when we had a good striker already.
I thought it was a kinda freak season for him tbh......by far his most prolific season by a large margin.....and to me it made sense to cash in...but I see your point that selling and replacing could have seemed like a bigger gamble.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I don't think anyone could have predicted what a poor season Murphy would have, lets just hope we have a fully fit McGoldrick, Murphy, and Sears (if he stays ) and that's not a bad front line, and if we can have a fully fit Bishop to provide some attacking flair from m/f we just might be on to something up front. It sounds like the defence is being strengthened with the arrival of Webster so if we can get a couple of decent wide players then we should have a far stronger squad than last season, we just need Evans to pay out for some quality as opposed to out of contract ageing journeymen.
