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How long can a club drift without sinking?

Steve Moore, Thursday 25 October 2018


With the news of Paul Hurst's sacking, we thought Steve Moore's piece from issue 18 of Turnstile Blues (published earlier this month) was worth re-producing here....

 

Seventeen years in the second division, eleven years of Marcus Evans’ ownership and an ever-shrinking fan-base.  Most of the highlights of that time were a decade ago. How long can this continue?

 

This season that started with the optimism of a new era and a young manager stepping up to try his hand in a higher division.  It’s just a shame that that optimism seems to have dissipated quite so rapidly in the face of a team that looks unlikely to score many goals let alone win too many matches and persistent claims of off-pitch friction at ITFC.

 

If indeed something miraculous has happened between writing this (an overcast Sunday afternoon after the Birmingham match) and publication then what follows might be wrong but at the moment there just isn’t the evidence that a big turn-around is coming and it’s hard to see that there is enough quality in the squad to consistently win games in this division.

 

And that’s a big problem for a team with no wins from the first ten league matches of the season. ITFC last played in the third tier in 1957, well before the experience of many fans but it’s not something any of us should be keen to experience.  The annual decrease in TV money is at least a million pounds and season ticket sales would inevitably drop even further.  The prospects of keeping our best young players – Dozzell, Downes, Nydam – are probably non-existent in the third division too.

 

For every side that has got promoted back to the second division at the first attempt there is another – Swindon, Coventry, Oldham, Bradford, Luton – who not only haven’t but might not ever do so.  Even clubs as big as Nottingham Forest, Leeds and Sheffield United took several seasons to return to the second tier.  All of those clubs, bar Luton, have played at least a season in the Premier League too.

 

In short, it would be disastrous for the current ITFC, we’re far more likely to follow the latter course than the former I fear.  How is the residual patience of ITFC fans for that, would we return as a club hoping only to stay in the division? Being in the Championship for seventeen seasons may have become frustrating but, in the absence of a currently highly unlikely promotion, it’s a lot better than not being in the Championship.

 

Relegation was not something this club had to worry about with Mick McCarthy in charge, well not once we had recovered from the mess of Paul Jewell’s efforts in the Autumn of 2012.  Yes, it wasn’t always aesthetically pleasing football but the team had the ability to dig in and force results when necessary.  Even in the one really disappointing season, 2016-17, there were enough wins to stay comfortably away from the bottom of the table even if not quite enough for the customary fifteenth place.

 

At our best under McCarthy, the team played fast if direct football, utilising the hold-up play of Daryl Murphy but also the guile of David McGoldrick backed up by pressing from the likes of Paul Anderson, Stephen Hunt, Jay Tabb, Luke Hyam and Cole Skuse.  The play-off season of 2014-15, despite its denouement, remains the one dominant season of the last ten years and the great shame of McCarthy’s time here was the failure to build on that.  Ironically, in view of the lazier caricatures of McCarthy, it was largely a result of attempting to adapt the team to play with quick wingers.  It worked superbly for a month in August 2015 but when it failed the energy and workrate of Hunt, Tabb and Anderson wasn’t there to compensate.

 

By the end of last season, it was clear to everyone that a change of manager was probably a good thing, unfortunately it all became unnecessarily acrimonious, something my TB colleague Gavin Barber described – accurately – as a ‘pantomime of spite’.  McCarthy could and should have been more diplomatic in his public comments but the hatefulness and spite of some fans – those who thought it more important to abuse the manager than support the team at Carrow Road or those who turned up at Brentford purely to be abusive – was something else.

 

The choice of a new manager was always going to be a critical one for both the club and for Marcus Evans.  In the eleven years that Evans has owned ITFC it is only McCarthy’s better spells as manager that have made it look remotely like a successful purchase.   Jim Magilton, who had been performing well on a low budget and with moderate expectations, was unable to adjust to the increase in both that followed the takeover and probably the less said about Roy Keane and Paul Jewell here the better.

 

In any case, the likelihood of McCarthy’s departure had been clear to all for a long time, indeed perhaps the only real surprise was that it hadn’t been in the Summer of 2017 which might have marked a mutually beneficial time for a change.  Evans therefore had plenty of time to plan for a successor.

 

That last season, solidly mid-table on average with a fairly decent first-half followed by rather mediocre second, should at least have made a transition easier for any new manager. The signings of Waghorn and Garner provided two effective second-tier forwards, filling a big hole from the season before, and the further development of young players bolstered the squad depth, Downes, Nydam, Kenlock and Emmanuel all appearing capable of playing a few matches in a season even if not consistently.  It was a squad full of players with a good attitude and work-ethic, unlike certain of the chancers that McCarthy himself had inherited.

 

There were gaps of course, Tommy Smith hadn’t been permanently replaced after his departure for MLS, David McGoldrick had left the club and it was quite possible that fan favourite Bartosz Bialkowski would leave the club should an acceptable bid be received.  That would still have left scope to evolve the squad without weakening it, to build on last season’s twelfth place.

 

And so to Paul Hurst.  Despite a brief flirtation with Jack Ross, Evans had it seems decided on the Shrewsbury manager as his preferred choice.  Having taken one of the third division’s smaller clubs to the Play-Off final and the Football League Trophy in the same season, after earlier success at Grimsby, it was the sort of positive, up and coming, appointment that most fans wanted to see.  Shrewsbury’s reputation for playing a high-tempo, pressing game – something Hurst made a point of emphasising in his first press conference – suggested that he could bring similar to Portman Road and create a base to build on over time.

 

Shrewsbury’s Play-Off campaign did mean that Hurst didn’t agree to join Town until the end of May, and then didn’t start until 12 June, only a couple of weeks before the start of pre-season training.  That probably wasn’t ideal but nor should it have been an insurmountable problem.

 

As part of his new approach, Hurst persuaded Evans there was a need to update the club’s whole approach to sports science including spending money on a new gym and taking the squad to Spain for a week, something perhaps more intensive than McCarthy’s preferred quiet week in Ireland.

 

Some of Hurst’s public comments seemed rather less modern, unnecessarily calling out certain players publically, making a big thing about showing he was in charge.

 

Instead of building on the existing squad, Hurst seemed more eager to sell established players and make wholesale changes to it. Promising central defender Matt Webster was sold to Bristol City leaving a second gap in that position and the continuous interest in Martyn Waghorn, together with the likely fee, was clearly of interest.  His eventual departure, weeks after it became inevitable, allowed Hurst to bring in two of his old Shrewsbury team – Jon Nolan and Toto Nsiala – as well as Accrington striker Kayden Jackson.

 

While those signings – along with Gwion Edwards and Ellis Harrison – were all of promising lower division players with the potential to improve there was a strong suspicion that many of them were the players Hurst would have looked to sign had Shrewsbury been promoted into the Championship this season.  There was a clear lack of Championship experience and a big hole where Waghorn’s goals had been.  That was compounded by the sale of Joe Garner at the end of the transfer window.

 

Given it had only been two seasons beforehand that the late sale, and non-replacement of, Daryl Murphy lead to a season that was mostly mediocre with rather a lack of goals, then perhaps Town fans should have been a bit more concerned than many were.  And yet, despite the money brought in, Town were still scratching around for a central defender and an experienced forward at the end of the loan window.   I keep hearing that Hurst had no choice but a football club does not have to sell every player who is interested in a move and ITFC have turned down unsatisfactory bids in the recent past; clear choices were made that were to the detriment of the squad.

 

So much for that intensive week in Spain, of the twelve new signings only two had been at the club early enough to participate so the enhanced fitness and familiarity with team structure that should have arisen were perhaps more limited than they might have been.  There were suspicions at the time but hindsight makes it clearer that the first team were not entirely ready for the start of the season.

 

Results might have helped the squad gel, but they have not been forthcoming.  Some fans have seized upon odd periods, occasionally a half but more usually twenty minutes or so, of good football as evidence of progress, that Hurst is working things out.  Others point to Roy Keane’s team recovering from going 14 matches without a win at the start of the 2009-10 season to finish 15th.

 

This is all a little panglossian, I’m not convinced.  To my mind there have been two major problems on the pitch this season:

 

  1. The inability of the team to play for 90 minutes;
  2. The number of players trying to make a step up to this division at the same time;

 

The first is a major problem, we’ve all seen enough of the Championship in recent seasons to know that it is first and foremost a gritty, attritional league where time and space are at a premium.  It’s not the same league as that Joe Royle’s teams played in let alone the one of the late 90s.  This trend is compounded by those clubs spending vast amounts of money in a bid to get promoted to the even bigger sums of money available in the Premier League.

 

It’s not just that the good football hasn’t been there for 90 minutes but the pressing and structure that Hurst set such store by have been non-existent for large parts of whole matches.  That tends to surrender the initiative to the opposition.

 

As for the scale of change, I can see something in nearly all the players we've brought in this Summer but there are just too many of them trying to make a step up in division at the same time - and that without the confidence and familiarity with each other's games that a promotion side would have.  

 

We’ve then compounded these problems by having a fairly large squad that Hurst has rotated erratically, making wholesale changes on more than one occasion to little discernable effect.  Continuity is thus more difficult to achieve, partnerships harder to form.

 

And so, after ten games we’re left with a team without a win with only eight goals scored and six more conceded.  There is no sense of progress and no belief that we can pull out the sort of gritty backs to the wall win that McCarthy specialised in after a few poor results.   All of which makes relegation a distinct possibility at the moment.

 

How much of this is Hurst’s fault?  It’s clear that he underestimated the Championship and was careless in changing too much too quickly.  It’s perhaps not a surprise then that he hasn’t been able to create a team playing how he wants it to.  There is still time for him to turn things round here – and for this season lower mid-table, that fabled 15th spot, would definitely be a success  - but something has to change quickly.  I think that it is already too late.

 

 

If Hurst has indeed failed at ITFC then it will be failure very much in keeping with Evans’ ownership of the club.  At no stage in the last eleven years has Evans deviated from the approach of letting the first team manager effectively run the football side of the club. There isn’t an off-pitch structure, call it a Director of Football or whatever, to maintain continuity across managers and age groups.   It’s a 1980s approach to running a football club, perhaps reflecting those whose advice Evans sought when he first took over the club.

 

And it risks major upheaval with every change of manager.  When Roy Keane took over from Magilton he inherited a talented, if unbalanced, squad which he first proclaimed was good enough before implementing wholesale changes and spending a lot of money on players who were not entirely worth it.  When he was replaced, Paul Jewell, after some worthwhile short-term signings, then brought another load of expensive players who were not entirely worth it and some of whom had very questionable attitudes.

 

It might have been hoped that Evans had learnt from that, he has made a lot of noise about his ‘Five Point Plan’ yet that always seemed more of a hasty public relations exercise, statements of vague intent, after a couple of poor first team performances than a considered strategy.

 

That Hurst has had the freedom to dismantle an effective Championship squad rather than build on it can only point to a lack of overarching strategy.  If Hurst has left the club by the time you read this, how many of the players he has brought in might a new manager want?

 

Evans has talked a lot about using our own youth players, an approach that even the most cynical fan can endorse, and yet Hurst has sent some of our most promising players out on loan and brought in a couple of young Premier League players instead.

 

How does this suggest any longer-term plan?  Most of the evidence suggests that it doesn’t.  McCarthy allowed Evans to get away with running the club on a bottom-third budget but without that experience the margin for error is slim.  If Ipswich do get relegated this season then it will be as much a result of Evans’ cumulative failures as of Paul Hurst’s

 

In contrast, Brentford with a smaller budget has successfully out-performed Ipswich for several seasons with astute signings and whilst playing better football.  There is a clear approach to player recruitment and development that has allowed season-on-season progress.  At worst, it’s stability in the division and entertaining football.  I would take both of those now and I’m sure I’m not alone. 

 

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