Magic - Norris 2 mill Sumo 500k Quinn - fee paid ( why the hell we signed three cm this season when we were in chronic need of a LM mid in January is beyond me ) Civelli 1 mill Lisbie 600k McAuley - 1.5 mil or so? Not sure on this one..... Stead 600k Gio loan fee and wages..... The likes of Ben Thatcher/ Ivan Campo wages.... Volz loan I think it's fair to say Magilton spent well over 6.500.000 in transfer fees ALONE plus wages/ signing on fees etc. He improved us to a degree, but how much? Keano - Martin 2 mill Edwards + Leadbitter 3.5 mill Colback/Rosinier et el loan Scotland 500k Priskin 1.7 mill Delaney 700k Again, will be more however this is simply the basis. Again there are signing on fees/ wages, everything else.... Leadbitter/Edwards coming for that fee will have been on decent wages, clearly! A very cool ( absolute base minimum here ) 8.400.000 was given to Keane to play with. Jewell - Bullard loan fee/ wages/ etc.... Chopra 1 mill JET Not sure on this as undisclosed/ top ups etc, I'll be generous and put 700.000 Bowyer et el wages Ryan Stevenson 50,000 Drury 150,000 NATHAN F'ING ELLINGTON!!!!!!!!!! Cresswell 500,000 or so ( top ups etc... ) Welcome to loan 10,000,000 players - Sonko/ Andrews/ Murphy ( mr Loan himself ! ), Stockdale, N'daw, Kisnorbo etc etc ETC ETC ETC!!!! Taylor 1.500.000 Absolute base minimum of 3.900.000 spent on transfer fees, and I think we know Bullard etc else will have cost us an absolute bucket tonne in wages/sign on fees/agents/ everything.... McCarthy- Wordsworth 100,000 Doherty 50,000 A few loans Noticeably less than the average 6,500,000 the other three managers had to play with......! I'll be interested in peoples thoughts on this. Another sad thing for me, is bar the Wickham sale, the absolute 0 amount of income the club has received over this period of time..... For four managers ( I have included McCarthy in this....) we have spent ( based on these figures, this is by no means smack bang accurate ) around 19.000.000 on transfer fees ALONE in this time period, achieving absolutely F ALL.
There has to be a bloody good reason for the lack of money available now, after all ME wouldn't just stop the funding and ruin any glimmer of promotion for a laugh or because he is bored. Sadly i dont have all the facts available and nor do i sit in on any board meetings, have to say i wish i did so i could find out the problem and shut JWM up!! A lot of it could be down to the fact that ME is being and has been badly advised by his non footballing associates etc. Honestly dont know why the sudden money freeze but hopefully something will change soon coz if it doesn't i can see JWM climbing back out of MM's ass and going after ME!!
I think if you break it down a bit further it goes something like ME gets excited at taking over football club lets two manager waste the best part of 20m, breaking up a promising squad that appears to be gelling and on the right tracks, and making us ****e in the progress Interest levels fall from ME. We get a new manager in, ME reigns in the spending but still gives a couple of million to spend, however the squad is still in a poor state and ME has learnt his lesson - multi million pound transfer fees are out but he is still willing to invest on wages as these are spread out evenly and means no massive initial outlay. Obviously we then end up paying after these contracts out in 1 outlay as a temination! experiment fails - MEs interest levels fall further and appoints another new manager and keeps an even firmer hand on the purse strings. Low transfer fee risk and sensible wages are now the order of the day. Results improve and things are on the up results wise.... which brings us to now. Unfortunately the NOW of now is a different world from the time of ME's takeover. There is FFP to hide behind and potentially lots of debts to take advantage of and deals to be had. Will we use this as a further way of encouraging a minimum outlay or does ME now have enough faith in his manager to give a little investment to help us on our way?
Good post TB and it pretty much sums up the whole sorry tale of the ME years. Isn't it incredibly ironic that the man who has made most of his vast fortune on flogging tickets can't even find the right strategy for filling up our stadium every other week!
Agree with your assessment entirely Tractorbhoy and banging on about ME sticking his hand in his pocket to shell out good money after bad is just living in cloud cuckoo land.As for the arguement that if ME has lost interest he should sell on. To think that,in the present climate, anyone would be willing to take on the level of debt ME is (hopefully)presently servicing is naiive in the extreme.I think we must face the reality that what we have at present is as good as it's going to get both in terms of finances available and taking other sides castoffs/being used as a feeder Club to blood youngsters for "bigger" Clubs.
BigAl - Why should we have to accept this garbage though? Its not the fans fault is it! ME only has himself to blame for appointing these clowns and giving them Millions to spend in the first place! He finally appoints a top manager presumably on a good salary and then stops the funding. Give Mick just a fraction of what Keane wasted and we would be in the Play-offs this season. Now we have to suffer the consequences as usual. I love this football club like we all do but I tell you what sometimes I often feel that it doesnt love us back!
There,I'm afraid, is the rub.We, as fans ,have a strong emotional tie to our Club, it's part of our life .Whereas most Club owners see it as, at best, an expensive hobby and ,at worse, just another business decision, aimed at getting the best return on their investment.Critical as we all were of Sheepshanks,at least at the end of the day you felt he shared our love of the Club.
Big Al I know the days of the Cobbolds are long gone but by god what I wouldn't give to see Mr John around the place right now!
Unfortunately this is all just business. if a regular business was in so much debt, and was losing/spending money like we were, then they obviously would re-evaluate their finances. This would then inevitably mean redundancies and a curb on our spending to get back to financial stability. No sane business owner would constantly over spend evey year. There has to come a time when they say enough is enough, and to then take measures to stabilise the business. Unfortunately that means the fans of the business suffer as a consequence. Is ME responsible? Maybe partly, but i'm also extremely thankful to him for rescuing our team, and trying to please us by giving previous managers millions and plenty of chances to get us out of this division.
I for one am not thankful that ME took over and I had major misgivings at the time! Sheepshanks sold us down the river as far as I'm concerned and he got a nice little drink out of it thats for sure. ME is an asset stripper and has sold off our training grounds, made staff redundant and basically supported Keane in trashing the very fabric of the club! I know people that work at ITFC and they have told me this first hand. Far from being our saviour ME will turn out to be our nemesis, I hope I'm wrong but from the evidence that I see and have heard ME will ruin this club. He is only in it for Profit and once he has stripped all the value from the club he will ditch us.
The problem for me is that although ME probably saved us he is also the biggest problem we have. As pointed out above by BigAl, at least Sheepshanks made you feel like he cared, even when he screwed up. I have no problems with the annoymity of ME but you need a public face of the club. I would also like to see some fairness on our debt levels and a 'X' year plan of moving forward rather than the scattergun 'lets try this approach and see how that works'
I know ME has spent (wasted) plenty of money but what I find most frustrating is that we finally have a manager that can truly take us forward and he has no funds to help him do it! I am sick and tired of reading about other clubs picking up decent players only for us to be scrabbling around for bargain basements and loanees. This whole anonymity thing also pisses me off! We are a club without a true figurehead and all we get is an inane press release once in a blue moon. Its not bloody good enough and especially for a club like Ipswich Town. Sorry guys but the more I think about this the angrier I become!
So how about the fact that ME "bought" our debts of £32m? Thats the £32m of debt which the previous owners/shareholders somehow manage to rack up. Good ol' Sheepshanks - but hey, at least we knew what he looked like!
Yeah Evans bought the debt but he's been charging us interest on that debt from day one! Our debt is now what £83 Million!!!!!
Stretchy, the problem is that he paid the bank 6m. 26m of it was written of yet we are still paying interest on the original 32!
But he owns the company (well, approx 85%) of it. He is charging himself the interest. Whilst he is still owner, that debt is irrelevant. It's only an issue if the debt is ever passed onto the banks. In saying all this, i don't claim to be an accountant, so I may have this all completely wrong and ME is indeed screwing us up.
Stretchy we are now completely in the doldrums as a football club! The money has been spent and the cupboard is bare!
It may well be a tax fiddle to help ME benefit personally but a) it is still a debt which means if/ when ME does sell us then it does need to be taken into account. He may right it off but thats not guaranteed. It also doesnt make us look like a worthwhile investment. b) it doesnt help the club - whilst incurring interest on an artificle debt - it means ITFC is worse off. This is especially unhelpful under FFP. All interest paid means less cash for other things (like players!) c) if he had ITFC's interest truly at heart then the interest would be either on the actual 6m he paid or it would be at an attractive rate. Some owners actually dont charge interest on debt at all. I think it is being charged at a realistic commercial rate and as it is not via the bank we are not at risk of some bank manager getting twitching and recalling it but it doesnt seem helpful from where I sit.
