Yellows & the Blues

Would we? Burley’s been out of the game for eight years. Butcher’s managerial and coaching career has been pretty mediocre. Dyer quit coaching here in the summer, because he wants a management gig, so he won’t be rushing back.

Employing somebody with previous ties to Ipswich would make sense, from a perspective of keeping supporters on-side. Although I’m not sure his pragmatic style of football would appease everybody, I’d rather John McGreal - someone with a rising reputation within the game - to take over.

 

Dyer had a lot of time for Paul Hurst and what he was doing with the academy and just didn’t want to work under Lambert. He would be back in a heartbeat for a decent gig.

Forgive me but John McGreal doesn’t get my pulse racing in quite the same way as that trio would. The place would be buzzing and we would be far greater than the sum of our parts (won’t happen of course).

 

Where have you heard / read this?

 

If we are talking about ex Town connections the only one that makes any sense to me is Mogga, but lets face it no one who's got any aspirations is going to come here and have one hand tied behind their back by Evans, plus of course there's not a vacancy.

 

Why do we have to go for a manager with previous connections? I don't agree with that - i believe there can be too much passion that clouds the main job for a manager.
We need a manager (and as importantly) a coaching team that can get a team playing good attacking football, a team that can create chances, and crucially, take the chances and score goals.
Maybe it's not the manager and coaches, but a lack of quality players (which we haven't had for a good few years).
So, as everyone has eluded to, the common denominator in all this, is the owner who is holding the purse strings.

 

A fair point, and I personally don't think a manager with previous Town connections is a necessity to gain promotion. Far from it. The likes of Burley and Butcher have done nothing in their careers over the past decade to suggest that they'd have the answers and get us promoted. Appointing a former Town player or manager would go some way to healing the fractures that are reappearing within the fanbase, if that's considered important.

An optimistic, ambitious appointment would be somebody like Nathan Jones, who certainly knows how to get a team playing well at this level. His record at Luton Town, where he got a team performing well above their ability (and playing excellent, effective football in the bargain) seems to be a good fit for us on the surface. Having said that, Jones struggled at Stoke (albeit at a higher level) and would encounter similar issues here - namely a reluctance across the club to change its ways and an absence of high-level, joined-up planning from top to bottom. What I'm fairly certain Jones would do, which our current manager has failed attempting, is get us playing in a semi-coherent, consistent way, making us a more effective attacking side, and actually providing a sustained run in the team for promising young players like Ben Morris and Armando Dobra.

 

I don't see the difference between Nathan Jones and Paul Hurst - both did an excellent job at their respective clubs in a lower division, both playing good football.

The managers personality also goes a long way, as we've seen with both Hurst and Keane (i'm convinced if either of them were given more time, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in)

Mick was very clever, plus his reputation helped him. He recruited his own players, and players that would do exactly what he asked of them (Jay Tabb a perfect example).

It's a tough one to get the balance right with a manager, they have to be progressive, have a good philosophy, and have the personality for the club (another perfect fit is Eddie Howe - fabulous at Bournemouth, but sh!t at Burnley)

 

Jones' sides typically play a more attacking, ‘keep the ball on the floor’ style of football than Hurst, who is a more pragmatic manager. I'd also like to think that Jones would do a much better job with man management and keeping the players on-side, something which Hurst lacked. Jones would undoubtedly bring around drastic change in recruitment, as he did at Luton and Stoke where he signed several players and released more. He may even let Skuse depart on a free and drop Chambers - moves that arguably need to happen for the club to move forward with a new style of football.

Then again, we’d have to ask if Evans would be prepared to fund a recruitment drive, even if it consisted mostly of frees and loanees. What would somebody like Jones make of the scouting department, the physio team, and the general facilities? There were reasons why Frank Lampard and Jack Ross turned us down at the start of last season.

If we don't get promoted this season, then Lambert (or whoever replaces him) will have a difficult task for the 2020/21 season. A tighter budget to work to because of SCMP and no Garbutt, no Downes, and possibly no Wolfenden. You’re likely going to get two or three decent teams coming down to League One (unlike this year where you had a financially ruined Bolton). And teams like Charlton, Barnsley, or Luton will have experience of recent promotions on their record. It could get uglier.

 

If we don’t make the playoffs, I think everyone will see that as a failure. However, for whatever reason, PL had been given a 5 year contract and the only way he will leave is if he is paid off which I can’t see happening. The club is rotten from the inside and I include the players in this as they wasted no time sticking the knife in when Hurst left, complaining that he trained them too hard. I didn’t mind him calling out the players for bad performances but my problem was his wanting to make 1/2 a dozen changes every game. Where the club goes from here is anyone’s guess but to be honest, I would not be surprised if we are in a relegation scrap in div 1 next year. Downes and Wolfy will be sold, Garbutt will go on loan elsewhere and we may even lose KVY. The only constant will be the fans

 

It would probably have to be an unemployed manager who needs a job, who else would come here after being told the expectation and by the way there's no money ?
I also think that ITFC are probably well known amongst football men as that Club in the sticks with the useless owner, it's not looking promising is it.

 

At first i thought you were talking about replacing ME with someone with connections with the club.

Unless we find a miracle worker of a manager the situation isnt going to change. We might get lucky with our players coming back to fitness and form at some point but it's unlikely to be this season and if we go up we are going to need to make at least a couple of quality signings to have a hope of staying up and if we don't financially were likely to need to move players on or in the case of Downes and Woolfenden cherry picked.

In short we are screwed unless we find someone to moderately invest in the club or by chance we get lucky (Which looked like happening earlier in the season).

We've always been a selling club but we used to re-invest that money in quality signings now we just seem to put it towards the odd stopgap loan player