Lee Way
[This article first appeared in the print edition of Turnstile Blues, Issue 22, January 2020]
Ever since this fanzine was founded, back in that Olympian year of 2012, we’ve been asking our football club for a leadership interview. And perhaps as part of a wider cultural change at the club, that interview has finally happened. Nobody in a leadership position at Ipswich Town is as soaked in blue and white as Lee O’Neill. Lee’s job title is a bit of a mouthful: ‘general manager of football operations.’ But the person behind the title is a local, ex-ITFC Academy player and current coach, who has a footballing and ex-Town-playing dad. Inspired partly by his mum, Lee is also a Suffolk-trained and former Combs Middle School teacher from near Stowmarket, the holder of two university degrees and proud to have worked for several years as a porter, barman and sweeper-upper at the Ipswich Gaumont.
It has been quite a journey from those places to taking a key leadership role at Ipswich Town: which is why Grant Bage was fascinated to spend an hour chatting with Lee O’Neill about his past, Town’s present and what the future holds in football. Appropriately enough, the interview unintentionally started in the foyer of the main reception at the Club’s training ground. As visitors wait on tasteful blue sofas, they can contemplate Town’s former glories: posters of star players from the past shout banner headlines like MAKE YOUR OWN HISTORY and HISTORY TEACHES EVERYTHING. Lee enthused about the makeover evidently underway around the place…
Lee O’Neill: I think to really clearly identify the club, the culture, the history we have to be proud of the environment that we are working in on a daily basis. So, things like making sure that people actively see the badge and the colours that are associated with the club are really important. They are important to me because I am from the area, but they are also important to new people who come to the area; knowing what that history is, and what it’s like. That really helps generate a culture of desire to want to make improvements.
Turnstile Blues: It is interesting that we are sitting in here. We’ve got paint pots, and we have got the club badge [see back cover], and I love the fact that this really says that it’s still under construction. Under reconstruction even. Because you have got the red outline of the crest and it is sitting there, with the rawl plugs waiting to stick it up on the wall...
Lee: And this is one of the last rooms to be decorated. So that in all the operational rooms you clearly see and can identify the club colours, the badge and what we are trying to do. In and around the training ground at any point you should be able to see the badge, you should be able to see the club’s colours, and they’re proud to be part of that. Whether you’re a member of staff working here or a player playing here, you know where you are. You are at Ipswich Town training, and you’re trying to get better: to move down that important road and make your debut and perform on the main pitch. People can look at it in different ways: why are we doing this, why we are doing that?
TB: Has anybody asked that?
Lee: You will always get that. Why are we spending a large amount of money on painting and decorating, that doesn’t make a big difference to the playing squad for example? What we are looking at is showing people around the venue when we are trying to recruit new players. We are showing them it really is a proud place, it’s a really unique place, it is a high-quality training atmosphere. Players today, the modern-day player now wants that. They don’t just want to be on the park playing in a local area, so this makes them feel like we are taking it seriously. Those little things can actually go a long way.
TB: And … football is about identity.
Lee: It is a big culture isn’t it, identity? You are the team going to war every game, so you want to be part of something. And you are a tight knit group of people, from the staff to the players, so all of those things are really important. Little things like that, they can help generate a better atmosphere and a better culture.
TB: And it is learned. Actually, one of the themes from my prepared questions is that I am really interested in the fact that you are a learner.
Lee: I don’t think you can stop to be honest with you. I think I am probably one of a number of people in this building who are like that. I am very fortunate in the position that I am in now, having gone through the pathway that I have gone through. There are a lot of people in this building who wants to learn more, who are keen to learn about pedagogy, andragogy, looking at how the young person learns going through the Academy. Also, how adults learn, because that is constantly changing. I am lucky that I trained as a teacher and I had some absolutely fantastic personal experiences of teaching. So many of those principles cross over to what I am doing now, it is very related..
TB: How did you end up going from football to teaching and then back to football?
Lee: Well I will probably go back and rewind to how it all started. First of all I was a scholar here, with Bryan (Klug) and Paul Goddard who is still in the area. They were my coaches. I was one of the many statistics who were not good enough. My dad had a career in the game and was very keen on me doing the same, as I was going through school. I always enjoyed school. Not just the sporting element, but I enjoyed the challenge of trying to be the best in the class at whatever it was. Whether it was history, geography, PE or whatever it was. And I wasn’t great at all of them, I wasn’t any good at some of them, but I did work hard at lots of things. My parents gave me I think, the right directions in life, to say you always need to keep your education quite high. So I made sure that I was doing all the additional stuff besides playing, to give me the opportunity if things didn’t work out to look at higher level education.
TB: What did you learn from being a teacher that is useful now?
Lee: Huge! The day-to-day environment of a kid, you don’t have to be the brightest person as a teacher, academically understanding everything that is going on in the world or the curriculum. The biggest thing you CAN have as a teacher is to find a way to engage that light bulb. And once it is on, keeping it on. It is all about relationships with people and I felt that was one of my strong points. It was not necessarily that I was academically gifted or that I understood the subject so well; for me it was about the relationships I had with the students and getting them to buy in to wanting to come to the lesson. You have got half the battle won if they want to be there.
TB: When we started talking you said “it is about people buying in”. And you have just been talking about that as a teacher. About switching people on, about lightbulbs and lighting them up. Is that a clear line of continuity?
Lee: I would say so, yes it is. I am not taking credit for it, because it is not just me. I think that is what has been fresh about Paul Lambert coming in, who feels the same way in trying to make sure that those things are brought to the forefront. All of those things like I said earlier on, if the players are excited to be here and value it. What they are learning as part of their experience, as is what the manager is teaching them to do, makes it a better thing. You have got their buy in already. So the way I see it is, if we get the environment right and we get all the people buying into it, our job is a little bit easier in that aspect of trying to deliver the messages that we want to deliver.
Grant: What are 11, 12 or 13 year-olds learning when they come into a football academy? Not just about football, but about life.
Lee: Well I think we haven’t cracked it first of all. I think the programme now, if I look back when I was a scholar and I first started in 1998 to what it was then, to what it is now, it is very different. The number of people and the staff involved, compared to what it was then, the amount of staff involved now is quadrupled if not some more. It is all about individualisation in the various disciplines so sport science and medicine, the coaching element is more about the individual player now as well as the team. The education and welfare around the players, the nutrition, there are so many different psychologists around it, there is so much support.
TB: So being a teacher … is a very good basis for being a general manager of football operations?
Lee: Well when you use the word “general” it is, because you come into school and you don’t know what has happened at the weekend with the kids and their environment, or what has happened that morning when they come into your environment. And you have to deal with a lot. Teachers have to deal with so many different things. It is not just about the lesson. It is not just about the subject. Children are people, and they are complex people that have a lot of things going on that affect how they relate in the class.
TB: Well it feels a lot longer to me as a fan and an observer, that you’ve been in this job for longer than a year.
Lee: Yes, it does. I guess because I have been here a long time as well not just this role, I have done so many different aspects to the role before, other than what I’m doing now. I have worked with some really fantastic people here. To take the first team to one side, my main aspect and passion has been with the young people in the Academy. And Bryan who has been here, he was my coach, he has been here a number of years. A number of players that I did not play with because I was a little bit older than them, but have played in the Academy, and are now here as coaches who are doing a fantastic job. And they are one of the statistics who have not made it [like me] but they have enough about them to understand how they could help other young people and give a lot back to them. So right from Adem [Atay], from Gerard [Nash], from Chris [Hogg] they are ex-players who are doing really, really good jobs with people.
TB: What have been the steepest learning curves you have had in this job?
Lee: Obviously, the relegation. That hurt us all. That season in general was. And now even though things are going slightly better and we are going in the right direction, it is all a learning curve. It was so disappointing that we ended up at the end of the season getting relegated. It hurt me like everyone else is hurting because I am a fan and I live in the town. I am not the only one who feels that way, but being involved in it, being right in the middle of it was tough. And it was probably the hardest learning experience. What I gain from that is that I never want to be in that situation again. I don’t want the club to be in that situation again. Can you guarantee that? Absolutely not, it’s impossible. That is football. But I know how much it hurt me. I’m not going to go into the specifics of the decisions that happened across the way but when you stand back and look at it, then we can evaluate positives and negatives. And I definitely learned from those and will try and not let that happen again and put in place things that maybe will stop those things occurring later down the line.
TB: Obviously …securing promotion, and avoiding relegation, those are the kind of outcomes of success. But we know there are lots of building blocks that go into the foundations of that outcome. What have you identified as the things that you need to change?
Lee: If we strip it back, I mean last year you talked about learning positives and negatives. That was one negative, the relegation. The positive of that was young players at the football club got an opportunity to play in the Championship, which was a real positive. And that learning experience they had was highly beneficial for them. You cannot recreate that again for them, having to go out on a Saturday and every game becomes six points. They know what that feels like, so those young players they have a relegation that they have been through. They don’t want to go through that again. So putting things in place for the future? For me it is the four pillars of the club. One of which is obviously the most important, is the first team and what they do on a match day basis. Three other pillars which are just as important are the Academy, because that enables the club to have long-term sustainability and enables us financially to compete with developing our own players who can develop to the market level that we want to play in the first team. Then there are two other areas. One is the business economics of the club; and also obviously the community aspect of the club. And they are all equally as important because if one of them isn’t done properly, it starts to lean to one side. I’ll take an example. If for example we don’t do a lot in the community, if we are not out there engaging with people, then the Academy is going to suffer. Because we are not doing this and not doing that. And that is what was happening, because we were losing out to other professional clubs in and around the area, because they were seeking an opportunity to invest in an area that we were not investing in. Taking a step back, and Marcus has to take a lot of credit for this as well, again not just me it is in conjunction with a number of other people who really reflected hard on what we did and put things in place to try and make that better. The foundations to build, we are nowhere near where we want to be. Our aspirations are to be back in the Premier League. You look at what other clubs are doing to be part of the Premier League set up; we have to put some foundations in place to build towards that.
TB: How do you go about that learning process in the strategic leadership team? There’s you, there’s obviously the manager, there’s the owner. Who else feeds into it?
Lee: We have two operations really. There is the training ground and there is Portman Road. One team but two entities, in different parts of Ipswich. We obviously operate out of here on a daily basis Monday to Friday; and the games are done on Saturday down there. But Monday to Friday their operation is the build up to Saturday as well. We are all building up to the same thing which is the performance at the game for the football club. But I think when Marcus has taken more of a hands-on approach, he has been able to speak to and listen to people within the business who had really good ideas. And this isn’t criticism of anybody who was in charge previously; but he hadn’t had the opportunity to sit down and speak with them, or they had not had the chance to speak with him.
TB: Were there layers in between?
Lee: Yeah. And you would always find in the face of adversity hopefully that always brings people together. And that is exactly what it has done, it has enabled some of the heads of department to make contributions about the decision-making process, maybe how we operate and what we do going forward. And Marcus has listened to those people in those relevant disciplines who know the industry and know what they are working. I think that has been a big help in trying to turn the ship around.
Grant: Last season when so much was going wrong, everybody could see that it was going to be very difficult to turn it round; and that the chances were that we were not going to be able to do it. You would never admit that to yourself, because you have always got to fight to the end, but evidently each game that went on everyone could see that our chances were diminishing. So - it is not easy having those clear-thinking conversations in that kind of atmosphere?
Lee: Yeah. And the dynamics constantly change all the time. Because the industry is never flatlined or anything like that, it is constantly in motion. In sport, in football in particular, it is up and down. Winning, losing or drawing. And we have got to find a way of our emotions being a little bit more stabilised, because we want it to be a longer-term strategy. When Marcus was talking about, and he came out in an interview and talked about it, is that we are looking at two or three years to embed the younger players into the squad. It won’t be easy. It will be really difficult for them to start with but along with some guidance, with the manager and the senior players, we hope that they will develop and get better and that will drive the club forward with some significant investment where it is needed, to help those young players. So that’s always been Marcus’s strategy, but it is not going to be fixed or sorted out or perfect straightaway. It’s going to take a bit of time. So that’s the longer term, we are thinking ahead three or four years to what that might look like. That is why we are not getting ahead of ourselves. Everybody is talking about how it’s going to be automatic promotion. Listen, that is absolutely what we all want, everybody in this building wants that. But we are realistic enough to know that it might not, it might take a bit more time. We have to understand that process, that with putting the younger players in they may make mistakes at the wrong time and it costs us a goal: fundamentally we lose the game and we lose the three points. That’s disappointing and the players they are human beings and they have an off day, that’s disappointing. But put into the grand scheme of things we are hopefully taking positive steps to take the club in the right direction.
TB: It is really visible to us as fans and anybody who watches the club that Marcus Evans has taken a much more hands on role in the last twelve months more or less. Has that helped you?
Lee: That’s invaluable. I am learning from probably, arguably, a very successful businessman and learning what makes things take. I use the term learning a lot, don’t I? But I am learning from him, and I’m learning from the manager. I’m learning from the support staff who come in, they have brought their own ideas to it. I guess I am quite reflective and looking at what can improve me personally and help improve the industry, or the business, or the club, whichever way you want to look at it. We speak a lot. Just about every day to be honest with you, more or less. Paul and I obviously speak every day as well. So the communication I think from the senior person at the club to the person who is the most senior operational day-to-day with players, that is really important. Because we are all on the same page and pulling or pushing, whichever way you want to look at it, in the right direction. People will always want us to get there as quickly as possible and we want that as well, but we are trying to make it realistic. Because you can get there too quickly, not have the right infrastructure in place, and everything falls around you. That’s a negative side of things. Would we like to get back to back promotions from League One to the Championship to the Premiership? Absolutely, it would be amazing. But in that process, we have to put certain things in place to make sure we can achieve if we get there and make sure we can sustain there. So I am learning a lot from him in particular, but not just Marcus. I am very fortunate that I sit in all of these meetings and it might not be the football element, it might be the business element - me understanding different aspects of how people operate. Really beneficial. Because I have to understand their world that affects my world. We are all one team at the end of the day.
TB: I am almost wondering Lee, whose right-hand man you are? Because it’s a bit like a triangle isn’t it? There is the owner, the manager and you. You’ve described actually, what I had sort of anticipated: which is that you’ve got this constant triangular communication.
Lee: Yes. I would say that probably is how it works. Also there’s a few other key people who will be feeding information. For me from the Academy’s point of view it is obviously Bryan (Klug) and looking at it from the head of coaching’s point of view and some senior coaches. The manager will have Stuart [Taylor] who is obviously the assistant, and we have Mark Andrews who is head of finance from the club’s business point of view. So there are other key people who contribute to those areas. But fundamentally it is a communication, it is making sure we can talk to each other. I might identify something here, Mark might identify something there that is important to make Marcus aware of and we can all feed in. Fundamentally Marcus is the one who has to make the decisions.
Grants. And you are talking to him you said, more or less daily?
Lee: Yes. People say you know, what does that mean “hands on?” People have to understand as well that he operates a lot of businesses all around the world that enable him to own the football club, and to fund the football club. To make sure that he has time to keep that going so that affects us, that is me understanding the business world. If he just took himself permanently and based himself at the football club every day, some of his other businesses might be affected by that. Which in turn would affect us, financially. Getting the right balance for everything is important. Which is why something as simple as talking on the phone or emailing or a conference call, is really important. We do all of those things.
TB: Marcus has been here and has owned the club for over a decade now. Obviously it was as big a blow to him the relegation, as it was to anybody. I hesitate to ask this question but it’s an honest question. Is he a fan?
Lee: One hundred percent. I have no hesitation. I have seen him sit there and we talk about it and joke about it before the game. The enjoyment factor of a game, I get really nervous. I can’t eat. And Marcus is the same. We get anticipation, and the level of anticipation, you don’t get that unless you care about something and unless you are a fan. Like I said I have grown up with the club, it is the only club which I have really known. I see it as a positive, some other people may see it as a negative I don’t know. But he is really passionate about it, he is. And of all his other businesses this is very different, it is totally different to what he does. Though I think he is passionate about trying to have any business or sporting team perform to the highest level possible.
TB: It is so difficult to make a football club financially sustainable, isn’t it? How, going back to those four pillars, how is that going to happen for Ipswich over the next two or three years?
Lee: Well promotion helps. Because you need to look at the revenue that is generated from the TV rights and the differences between the leagues. That is a significant amount of investment. It is making sure that players’ contracts are correct, both from a promotion and relegation point of view so that you are safeguarding those areas. For me personally it is looking at other ways that we can promote the football club from a business point of view. We are very fortunate that we have a lot of good sponsors, a lot of good people corporately who are involved with the club. Our match day hospitality is one area that generates revenue for the club. The biggest gains I see that we are making is probably in a relatively short period of time, it is actually being back out, and speaking to the local fish and chip shop or the local hairdresser’s and the local businesses in and around. We can help them, and they can help us. By having those relationships again in the local area, it encourages the young people to get involved in our camps, our training camps, our coaching during half terms and Christmases and summers. All of those things obviously help generate revenue for the club but enable us to reinvest that back into offering more. It is not just about the football programme it is about what is right as a club, what responsibility do we have for young people, can we help for example with mental health? With obesity? Government initiatives that they are trying to tackle whether it be local crime, we are a big catalyst for a number of those initiatives that we can support. There so many areas we can help with and make improvements on but it’s just scaling it out and making sure that we can realistically achieve those over a period of time, rather than biting off more than we can chew and not being successful at it.
TB: So those four pillars … there was the first team. The Academy, Ipswich Town as a business and then the fourth one is the community. You have just been talking about that.
Lee: The identity. It is their club. Although Marcus Evans is the owner of the football club it is their club as well. They live in the town or they have lived in the town and move away but their focus point is football club. We are the only professional football team. What was disappointing was being in the school environment, I was in some of those schools and I did not see as many kids coming in with a Town top. And I know the Premier league’s big and its massive and that sort of thing and kids like watching it on TV, and England players that sort of thing. But I still remember at the time when I got my first Ipswich Town shirt and you see kids being proud to wear the top, it might be at an after-school club or something. That’s where it all starts. It starts with their peers in and around school, who their mates are supporting, what are they doing at the weekends? Are they playing football or are they watching football? To get back and re-boost or rebrand it, whatever way you want to do it or look at it, it is about engaging those young people. Because when I am long gone and other people are in my seat then it is about their club, and what they are going to do with it. But they need to have those things put in place now to make sure there is a club in the future for those young people. And they are going to be those fans sitting in the stands in 10 years’ time, supporting the club through the next phase of the football club’s journey.
TB: And that is so important for the two pillars if you like of the business and the community. Because one of the reasons we started our little fanzine in 2012 is we felt that had been lost. That somehow the ownership and the management of the club seemed somehow to be separated from each other, like a horrible divorce. Separated from the fans, that the link had been broken. How is that being re-forged now?
Lee: I think there are so many things, and this is where the manager has been really influential. He has been great really in a number of those areas because to have his support, him drive a lot of these initiatives. Where we will say for example right, we need to engage with the ex-players. They are icons, they have done a lot for the club and really at the moment we don’t offer them X, Y and Z. We need to get them involved, and obviously his relationship with them that helps. Then being invited into the environment helps. All of these little things and then establishing and making people aware that we are starting to open the doors and do a little bit more, to feedback about how we are doing things, where we could make improvements. But also getting them involved in helping to raise the club profile, helping us to understand what the people in the area want. A lot of these ex-players live in and around the area, they know people, they go to the pub, they speak to people. And making sure that they know what we are doing so they can tell those people. Off the back of that we have had fans’ own groups up here to talk about issues that we can improve and try to help with. We haven’t been able to fix absolutely everything that they’ve addressed because that is a long list of things that we can try and make improvements on. But there is a list. And we are starting to work through that list of things that we can improve. One the training ground and two Portman Road. We are engaging more with the season-ticket holders, we have got an event on Saturday for example with the manager. And the community staff are going out there. We value the season-ticket holders, especially the people who’ve been there a long time and supported the club through the good times and the not so good times. Again, you find out a lot out about people when things are not going well. So, to go out and try and give them something a little bit different, and a little bit special. Because you are the ones who are really important to the football club. Not that normal supporters aren’t, who are turning up on a Saturday. But they commit their money early, they commit to a whole season, so we are doing some different things with them. Where they might get a drink or a pie or a burger or whatever it is; but also get a chance to ask Paul some questions of myself or some other key staff members. Some questions about the football club. A good example, Paul [Lambert] and I are off to night to a referees’ event. They asked the manager whether he would be willing to give up his time to go and help them raise awareness of how referees are refereeing in the area, and some support. It is Monday night 7.30pm. Paul and I are going to spend the evening tonight with the local referees of Suffolk, to try and help them. We are doing more than we have ever done. At one of the supporters’ events last week we had the AGM and one of the supporters brought up some of the areas that he feels we could do more in. All the players are out now helping the trust for example, at all these coaching events. So not only the young players going to these coaching sessions, but our first team players are going there to support them so that they can see the link. There is our community, there is our first team and there is a link there and they get it. We are out doing loads.
TB: And that does show. It shows on Instagram, it shows on Facebook, it shows on Twitter, it shows in the local press. As a fan you really notice that.
Lee: That is nice to hear because like I said, no one knows what is going to happen in the next three or four months. We know a number of things can happen but I can tell you, there is a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes and to reiterate, not just me but lots of other people here who do not necessarily get the recognition, or who do not necessarily get the chance to sit down with you and explain what they do. There are a number of people here who work really, really hard, who all contribute to the bigger picture - which is trying to make the whole club better.
TB: Going back to the plan…. how does it work over two or three years to make sure we do get out, if we don’t go up this season?
Lee: I wish I had the exact answer to that, because if it was guaranteed I would probably be a millionaire! But I think probably you can only really put things in place that you strongly believe in, that you strongly really get behind. From my point of view and I’m speaking on behalf of the manager as well, it is about the younger players at the club. We truly believe we have some really good ones who can get us out of this league. Whether that be this year or next year we believe they can get us out of this league. We believe we have got some really experienced players, who have played at a higher level and that will help the younger players get to that next stage. And I truly believe that if Marcus feels, under advice from the club, that we need to invest in certain areas he showed that in the summer by going out and getting Kane as an example, Will Keane as an example. These players have been at higher levels or have cost money and he has done that. He has invested back into the squad. In my opinion and I might be slightly biased, but I look at the squad and I think a we have got depth and be we have got quality. I look at the ability for our team to be able to get out over the next X amount of time as a real benefit for the club, because if you look at it contractually those players are committing to us and we are committing to them, as part of that longer term project. You have seen in the last few months we are trying to make those commitments to them because we believe they are at the right level to get us out of there.
TB: Norwood with a three-year contract?
Lee: Yes, I guess that answers your question really about how we plan to do that. But I reiterate that I do not know, and that I wish I did! It would be an easier journey for all of us. But I am very hopeful we can achieve that and is I want all of us to achieve that as quickly as possible. But having been in the football industry for a little while now and learning the highs and the lows, I try to keep a little bit more of a level-headed understanding about what that journey might be like.
TB: It is about that long-term leadership.
Lee: Yes. I have a saying with the manager “never too high, never too low” but it is actually what I was preaching at school to be honest. You never have too high a day, you never have too low a day, because you get them. When you follow that rollercoaster you 100% get them. But this industry you look at the statistics of people winning games, you spend more time at the bottom than at the top, so you do need to be a little bit more level-headed.
I am open to the fact that we are winning some games which is great, we have turned the ship around, but we still have a lot of work to do. I think we have got some good people at the club and we have got some good structures being built. But no one is taking their eye off the ball and thinking we have cracked it or anything like that. No one is getting carried away. We are 100% focused on the task which is a little bit more linear and long-term.
Grant: You talked about managing those highs and lows both as a teacher and in sport. Do you enjoy it? It must be the most knackering job…
Lee: It is, but you know what: find something you like doing and you will never work a day in your life. That was what my dad was always telling me. So I am really, really fortunate to be working in the club first of all because I get up and, don’t get me wrong I have bad days like everyone else has bad days, but if you work with good people and in the right environment it makes a lot of difference. You want to try and achieve something; and I want to try and achieve something with this club. I have bad days, but we get on with it and we try not to let them happen too often, but people around you pick you up. If you are having a bit of a bad day for whatever reason then someone else will say “come on let’s get on with it” and that is the sign of a team. And that is definitely what we are trying to create, on and off the field.
TB: I was last here in 2002, and at that point you were just deciding that it was not going to be for you, that it was not going to be your future. How do we help those youngsters like you, those 99% of youngsters who do not make it? What do they go out with, what is portable? What is really going to help people as people in their future careers?
Lee: That is really important. What we have in place now is a life skills programme which we didn’t really talk about today much. The life skills programme for our Academy now is huge. They get an opportunity to learn about finance, to learn about different industries. And what that might look like? How to pay their council tax bill, do this and do that. Little small things they don’t necessarily know …
Many thanks to Lee O’Neill for giving us his time for this interview.