Meet the new one-off fanzine same as the old one-off fanzine: By Mutual Consent

A new one-off ITFC fanzine, By Mutual Consent – from the people who brought you Turnstile Blues, the ORIGINAL one-off fanzine – will be on sale outside Portman Road before the home game versus Leeds United on Saturday, 30th March 2013. Price on the day is a super, soaraway bargain: only £1.

Look for our sellers at locations around the ground including by Sir Alf and Sir Bobby.

The ‘zine will also be on sale by mail order and available from A. Ross, 58 Lonsdale Road, Ipswich, IP4 4HD. Please send a cheque for £2, payable to A. Ross.

Copies will also be available via eBay. Please look out for further information on Twitter @ByMutualConsent or this website: http://www.turnstile-blues.co.uk

A downloadable PDF of By Mutual Consent will be available from www.turnstile-blues.co.uk on the evening of Wednesday, 3rd April 2013. Once again, the download will be free, but we are asking people who access the ‘zine this way to make a donation to this charity: http://www.aishopeacademy.org/youth-football-academy-africa/soweto

A link will be set up via this website so that you can make a donation before downloading and don’t forget to follow @ByMutualConsent and @Turnstile_Blue on Twitter.

Not from the Owner

by Gavin Barber

Say what you like about Marcus Evans (actually, don’t: he can afford better lawyers than you can), but you could never accuse him of being schmaltzy, ingratiating, or trying to suck up to ITFC fans. His much-heralded “FROM THE OWNER” column, trailed in the EADT on Friday, announced in banner headlines on the cover of last Saturday’s programme, and subsequently reproduced in full on TWTD, began with less of a rallying cry than a reality check:

“Ipswich is one of the clubs in the Championship that based upon historic figures, have been spending in excess of the soon to be introduced FFP rules.”

Well, there you have it people. Why bother trying to get the fans’ little faces puffed up with pride when you’re only going to slap them with the cold fish of fear? None of us want platitudes, but given the rarity with which Evans addresses the masses, it might have been nice to start on a slightly more unifying note. Instead, an opening so stark that it can only have been deliberately constructed as such, brought to mind Gareth Southgate’s famous appraisal of Sven-Goran Eriksson’s 2002 World Cup quarter-final team talk: “We needed Churchill but we got Iain Duncan Smith”.

In paragraphs which may yet form the basis of a chapter in a future management textbook on Managing Stakeholder Expectations, Marcus goes to significant effort to contextualise the club’s financial position, yet strangely fails to mention the ever-growing debt that is presented in each year’s accounts. A prudent approach is all very well: most supporters wouldn’t want the club to indulge in the sort of profligate spending that has seen the dramatic downfall of others (though it does beg the intriguing question of what would have happened if Marcus had been successful in his reported attempts to install Harry Redknapp in the manager’s office). But any true appraisal of the sustainability of the club’s situation would surely have to acknowledge the increasing amount of red on the balance sheet.

In seeking to mitigate the gloom, Marcus asserts that “We have an Academy stronger than many. … Our Academy advantage over others will remain”. It’s nice to see the Academy recognised as a plus point. Unfortunately, the act of saying that ours is better than most other clubs’ doesn’t make it true, even if it’s “the big M” (© Nigel Pickover) who’s saying it. There’s nothing to indicate that our Academy is any better resourced than those of our Championship rivals – and it’s interesting to note how many young coaches and players are opting for what’s on offer down the A12 at Colchester. The once-famed “conveyor belt” of talent into the Town first team has stuttered and halted, to the point where Mick McCarthy recently observed that there were no young players “knocking down the door” of the first team.

Having given us all a further stern talking-to on the subject of money, Marcus moves on, 20 paragraphs into a 23-paragraph article, to acknowledge the existence of supporters in a tone that sounds more like bemusement than appreciation. Having made reference – with a notable lack of any tribute – to the recent departure of Simon Clegg, Marcus reassures us, with regard to “receiving and taking account of [fans’] views”, he’ll be “assessing any void that has appeared through Simon’s departure”. Now this, if analysed too closely, could constitute some kind of philosophical paradox. Can the absence of a vacuum leave a void? Clegg’s approach to supporter engagement has been discussed extensively on these pages, in the first issue of Turnstile Blues, and elsewhere. Cursory at best, patronising at worst, Clegg was never in danger of receiving one of those worthy “supporter liaison” gongs that get handed out by Mark “Clem” Clemmit at the Football League Awards. (Perhaps avoiding that was always his aim). So if Marcus is as motivated by cost-cutting as he says he is, then any “void” in communication with fans left by Clegg’s absence could easily be filled by, say, a gargoyle, or one of those cross-looking proboscis monkeys.

Of more merit would be a commitment to refresh the club’s approach to supporter engagement, rather than viewing it – as Evans’ article appears to suggest that he does – as a box to be ticked. It’s been well over a week since Grant Bage wrote on these pages an eloquent, passionate, measured piece, describing the real “void” that exists at Ipswich Town – the owner’s lack of visibility – and politely invited a response from Evans. At the time of writing, despite the piece having been sent to both ITFC and MEG, we’ve yet to receive one. Once again, when it comes to meaningful engagement with fans, Evans’s silence speaks volumes.

The fun didn’t end on Saturday though, and on Tuesday night it was the turn of Town’s new Managing Director double-act Ian Milne and Jonathan Symonds – already being described by absolutely no-one as “the Ant and Dec of football administration” – to crank the bon mots machine up to 11 and make their own appearance in the programme. After first describing their Tolkeinesque five-year quest to discover the aim and purpose of a professional football club (SPOILER ALERT: it’s about winning football matches and having fun – who knew?), M&S continue in the owner’s relentlessly pragmatic tone, proudly trumpeting their work “developing and launching various projects and ideas to promote a new culture centred on efficiency”. Woot! Yeah baby. Efficiency! Let’s hear the North Stand sing. “Give me an E, give me an F…”

That noise you can hear – it’s not the business-like hum of an efficiency-centred culture. It’s Bobby Robson, turning in his grave.

A Family Affair?

Gavin Barber and son went to the most recent “Family Day” at Portman Road and he was less than impressed.

On pages 9-11 of the Turnstile Blues fanzine, Alistair Rattray gave an excellent and thoroughly comprehensive description of Town’s recent failure to connect with supporters through media, public relations and matchday entertainment. So when the club announced that the Sheffield Wednesday game would be a “family day”, with discounted prices and special events for kids, I was hopeful that it might have been a move in the right direction.

Sadly, like an Aaron Cresswell set-piece or an item of New Labour legislation, it appears to have been a decent idea which was let down by being badly executed.

The discounted prices meant that kids tickets were priced at £5 – a decent reduction on the normal price, but at a time when the ground was set to be barely more than half-full anyway, why not accept it as a loss-leader and admit accompanied kids for £1, or even for free? There are other clubs in the League structure who admit under 7s for nothing as a matter of course. Surely better to have some better-populated stands for once.

More significantly, and much like the recent discounted ticket promotion for the game against Cardiff, the event suffered from very few people apparently knowing about it in advance. There were a couple of press releases which were picked up by the usual outlets (such as TWTD) and something on the Club website, but very little detail. I’m aware that resources are limited, but there seems to be a very one-dimensional approach to public relations from the Club at the moment – as though the mere release of information into the public domain will suffice for bringing things to the attention of people who might be interested to hear about them. Were efforts made through local schools, play centres and Children’s Centres?

Details in advance of the day were vague – my son was particularly interested in the “mascot race” which had been mentioned in the press release, but it was only through tweeting Planet Blue on my way to the game that I found out when and where it was happening (credit, incidentally, to whoever manages the Planet Blue Twitter feed for getting straight back to me). As can be seen from what I believe to be my EXCLUSIVE video footage of the race, there was a sparse crowd in attendance to see Crazee romp home in first place.

There were face-painters in Planet Blue – which, again, I found out about through Twitter – unsurprisingly there was no queue for their services when we arrived. The Suffolk Playbus – an excellent facility for pre-schoolers – was parked way on the far side of the practice pitch (a long walk for little legs). There were golf and bowling events which were fine in themselves but – again – suffered because very few people knew they were happening.

From my dealings with the Club I’ve always got the impression that there are some very hard-working and dedicated members of staff there. It’s a shame that they – and by extension, supporters – are being let down by a lack of infrastructure which means that well-meaning initiatives such as Family Day are nowhere near as good – or as effective – as they could be.

Decision Time

Some choice words by Gavin Barber.

According to Albert Camus – just about the only notable goalkeeper not to have been linked with a move to ITFC over the last six months – “Life is a sum of all your choices”. Decision-making was one of the many woeful aspects of Town’s play during Saturday’s miserable defeat by Sheffield Wednesday, though in truth there haven’t been many good decisions made at Portman Road, on or off the pitch, for about the last five years.

Which is one of the reasons why so many fans are, to say the least, sceptical about Marcus Evans’ and Simon Clegg’s capacity to get right what may prove to be their most important decision yet – the appointment of a new manager.

After Saturday’s game, I heard (courtesy of a fellow train passenger who hasn’t yet had the invention of headphones or volume controls brought to his attention, and evidently felt that everyone else in the carriage really, really needed to hear Radio Suffolk’s post-match phone-in) several Town fans, and Mick Mills, talking about Mick McCarthy as the sort of manager who was needed, to give our current selection of under-achievers “a kick up the backside”. It’s a tempting view – performances have, to general astonishment, got more and more spineless over recent months, to the point where we are now pretty much putting out a team of invertebrates every week (in a figurative sense, of course – real invertebrates are much better at keeping their shape). McCarthy isn’t a man who tends to inspire a great deal of affection, but if his methods could produce a team that actually displayed some kind of resilience or determination, it would certainly represent an improvement.

But having reflected on it further, it strikes me that we need to appoint a manager who we’re confident will be the right choice, not for the next five matches or even the next five months, but for the next five years.

As several supporters have pointed out, short-term thinking has played a large part in getting ITFC into the mess we’re currently in. Thinking back to the previous managerial appointment, there was an urgent need to bring in someone who could harmonise what appeared to be a divided and disaffected dressing room – a blokey sort of a bloke who’d provide some form of relief after the players had failed to respond to the somewhat more singular motivational strategies of Roy Keane. And it worked, up to a point – we didn’t get relegated that season and some players seemed to respond quite well. For a bit.

But that was as far as it went. It was an appointment for that moment, but not for the times that followed – Jewell didn’t have the tactical nous, or the willingness to update his thinking, to compete with more astute contemporaries such as Brian McDermott or Nigel Adkins: and you can only tread water in this league for so long.

So whilst it’s certainly appealing to think that Jewell’s successor might be the sort of person who would bring managerial boot into rapid connection with pampered player’s arse, Evans and Clegg need to be thinking beyond the immediate need. There’s a risk that a manager whose main attribute is being “no-nonsense” (surely the adjective most commonly applied to McCarthy – incidentally, what does it even mean? Does it imply that other managers preside over dressing rooms rife with quirky surrealism and non-sequiturs?)  could deliver enough strategically-placed rockets to get Town scrambling away from the bottom of the league, but if that’s all he can deliver, then we’ll end up stagnating again within a matter of months, and the whole sorry spiral of decline will start again.

We may, therefore, have to be prepared for things to get worse (I know, I know) before they get better. Which is not to say that I subscribe to the “maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for us to get relegated” school of thought. Ask Coventry fans for their views on that. It would be a disaster – Championship survival has to be an imperative for the next occupant of the manager’s office. But we need someone whose remit, and capability, extends beyond those immediate imperatives.

Albus Dumbledore – a more accessible literary figure than Camus, though by all accounts not quite so handy between the sticks – said that “It is our choices that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities”. If Marcus Evans won’t show us his face, it’s time for him to use this moment of choice to show us what he really is.