I was reading today that Ipswich are in the top 5 most depressing teams to support I am very very confident that this wont be the case next season regardless of who the new manager is. If nothing else ME has acknowledged that the entertainment value at PR was almost non existent and that resulted in plummeting attendances, and there is no way that the new manager wont be under any allusions that entertainment value is a must and will be at the clubs core value. cant wait for next season, bring it on
If anyone can feck things up its Evans, hes brilliant at it, doesn't need any help, and wont be told, all will be revealed........ eventually.
I actually think manager wise Evans selections - I can all understand to a degree. Magilton - Okay he went early into Evans reign. I thought Jim was a lot better until the ££££ came along. I understood why it was time for him to go. Keane - seemed a match made in heaven. Good job at Sunderland to start with, up, seemed would be good with £££. Just didn't happen..... I was excited at the time and thought ' woah Keane will be brilliant - he won't take crap ' appears he didn't but just didn't happen! Sad. Jewell - maybe the weirdest one. That said, two VERY good jobs followed by two shockers. Couldn't regain former glories and left us in a hell of a mess. Perhaps the appointment going back I wish we could repick. Sure, Keane didn't work however it was more exciting at least to start with.... Mick - Just not given a penny to piss in during 5.5 years incharge - which felt like 10. Done the best interms of results - however relationship with fans as we know......... just a calamity at the end and had to go. New guy - probably going to be given a similar deck of cards to Mick in terms of spend. Will inherit many a talented youngster so a lot better from that perspective. Seems a tough job. We'll ultimately see! Do I think we're likely to be top 10 / outside chance of play offs next year? Not really. Be a tough season.
Keane was the worst for us. Killed the academy, sold the wrong players and set us back years. Jewell's problem was too many mercenaries. Neither of them had us playing as a team.
In hindsight I thought ME pulled the trigger a little early with Jim. For a rookie manager did very very well without money and to be fair didn't improve us after spending lots of money but after the consequent 10 years he didn't do a bad job. I was a big Jim fan. Keane I hated the appointment from the off, he's just a tw*t and it was the complete opposite of what you would describe as an itfc manager. Is the worst ITFC manager in history, some of the decisions he made defied logic and put us back years, despite getting Sunderland promoted the warning signs were there on what he'd be like as a manager. Jewell didn't do a good job but I think the majority of managers would have struggled after Keane. What we needed to lift the darkness initially but tried to build a champagne team without the foundations in place and over 1 summer. Think a manager like Jewell could of had success here if he was appointed after Jim rather than Keane, a manager for the good times not the tough. Tried to get us to run before we could walk. I never have liked McCarthys attitude on the game, even before he came to town his actions really annoyed me but he is a good manager. After the attempted Champagne football of Jewell he did the polar opposite. If Jewell tried to get us to run before we could walk Mick only ever tried to get us to walk even if we'd been able to for years. He replaced the Champagne footballers with workhorses and it worked and he managed to put together a pretty talentless squad and get them into the playoffs. After this his recruitment policy changed for the better he managed to recruit some young fairly talented players for peanuts and had a number of talented academy players at his disposal, unfortunately despite the improvement in recruitment we went backwards on the pitch with a more talented squad and were trying to play the same way with more talented players and this made things more frustrating as they weren't as good at it as the limited squad we had in the playoff season. He had to go and should have gone alot earlier as he forgot the most important people at the club, the fans.
Pretty much agreed with all of that itfcptc, spot on! In retrospect, I also thought Jim should have been given more time. He had a poor final season, but we were close to the play-offs his previous two campaigns and we were playing entertaining, mostly on-the-ground football. Regarding Evans' appointments, he's made two bads ones (Keane and Jewell) and one good one (Mick). I'm hoping that with the time afforded to Evans to make this decision (and hopefully with the lure of a patient owner, a talented academy, and a decent squad), the right calibre and quality of a manager will be attracted to the job.
I liked Jim until he got money to spend. I think he’s biggest failing was announcing publicly which players he was going after. The selling club knew we had money so massively hiked up the price - hence paying around 2m for Norris who was not worth anything like that. That said, he got us playing decent football with no money in his 1st season. Jewell is a difficult one as I have no idea what his strategy was. We ended up with about 9 loan players none of whom really cared about the club. As for Keane, he put it best himself when he said something along the lines of “ any idiot given money to spend in the championship will get a team in the top 6” he left us bottom with no Klug, sold some of our best young players for a pittance and pretty much ruined the club
This re Jim. We went public re Norris and made 3 / 4 / 5 bids. Absolutely clueless. Just kept going! Least he listened to the defenders re Walters for the two Chester games. Guess his links with Pablo sorted that - with Lee in good nick, 07/08 became great fun with them 3. Just LM + his stupid transfer policy WITH ££££ that was the major issue. Tellingly, WITH £££ and being certainly at that time one of the big spenders in the league, 08/09 we actually went backwards under Jim. If we hadn't nabbed Dos Santos, when apparently Klug tried to get us D Bent due to Spurs connections, the season would have been an even bigger failure. We SHOULD given spend / how we did the year before have walked into the play offs 08/09 and it didn't happen. The injury to Civelli unlucky, the rest, poor, poor management. Had to go.
Totally disagree. I wasn't happy that Klug left but by now we'd definitely be a Premier League club. Our football has deteriorated under Jewell and McCarthy. Jewell's appointment and McCarthy's overstay have been the two worst decisions. Ireland were very unlucky not to qualify - he has matured and he would have matured had he stayed with us.
Do you mean Blue Square Premier League, as that's the only Premier League we'd be playing under Keane. I really hope you're joking?
Think we've had this debate before, but still find it amazing that anyone can back Keane even now.. He is not alone in his crimes, but what he did to this club was to send us backwards the best part of a decade which we are only now beginning to recover from. Agreed, the appointment of Jewell was a bad decision and the football arguably got even worse, but the destruction of the whole set up was instigated by Keane and that is the biggest crime of all, given where we were and what it has taken to get us up to that kind of operation again.
Keane is not just the worst manager this club has ever had he's probably the worst manager I've ever seen. The only good thing Keane ever did was get rid of Ben Thatcher other than that he was disastrous. Are you trolling? If so it' worked!!
We are lucky in that with only a couple of exceptions we had outstanding managers for the best part of 50 years. Paul Jewell is by far the worst manager Town have ever had since the 60s (I can't really comment on Jackie Milburn and those guys cos I wasn't around). Not Keane. Keane's ideas were all spot on but his maturity was lacking. In the context of Town managers though it's a bit like comparing the colour of a couple of turds.
Jesus christ - you're actually being serious. Wow. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_div_1/9194842.stm This match pretty much summed up my thoughts of Keane during his time with us. A LONG WAY to go from Bristol, but went to Hull and back. Sidenote - did get a selfie with future town player Liam Feeney in a service station! A back four of O'dea / Delaney / Smith / Eastman. That's correct. FOUR centre backs across the defence. One of whom O'Dreadful who stole a living as a 'professional footballer ' he was absolute GASH. Eastman - all well and good playing academy players however the titanic had a quicker turning circle..... with a partnership of two players who require a leader together - OH DEAR.... Then a midfield 5 of Edwards/ Norris / Leadbitter / Livermore / Colback. Combative to say the least.......with Jason Scotland being an isolated front man......... The donut then brings Priskin / Peters + Wickham on. Manages to leave Andros Townsend, who was class for us on loan, as an unused sub. Keane had a major issue playing Townsend as often as he should - he was quality for us and I never worked out how that melt didn't spot it. No way in hell were all of Keane's ideas ' spot on ' - they just weren't. Mind you, the tosser thought slide tackling a tactics board was a way to gain respect and manage a team. Absolute muppet who I'm glad is nowhere near us now.
Westlake - I was at that game against a very good Hull side. Koren's goal was a wonder strike. The performance in that game was not the best under Keane but was still a lot better than any I saw under McCarthy.
That game was painful - we offered absolutely zero. Such a long time ago hey! My only visit to the KC. May get the chance to do WBA next season - one along with QPR I've somehow missed over the years....
