Davefevs

When I said stirring, perhaps I should’ve meant I’m enjoying warning them of what they really have.

I said in the summer, he’s playing a “General Manager” role too. Whether that balance will change we’ll see.

I think you are right to raise / debate what you have above, it ain’t black and white is it? I will always try to present a balance in my “arguments” for and against, might not feel an even balance. In Mark Ashton’s case, the view is grey, but imho it’s dark grey, rather than light grey. Others may see it the other way, that’s when good discussion can be held. I think we hit poor discussion when posters can only look at it from one side. It is fine to disagree with the other side but try to explain why is helpful. FWIW, we did stay within FFP, so you can rightly argue that he only spent what he brought in. My side of this debate is that with a diminishing squad in terms of asset value, the ability to sell players to cover the costs was trending towards coming to a head. Covid has sped that up, Covid is not the root cause, “reckless” spending is the root cause. That spending has been the focus of mine since the window of Jan 2018. My analysis over the months since reached a conclusion that the trend did not look good. Rising costs, less players / less value to offset costs with player sales. I think Mark Ashton saw that happening and bailed on us (and his responsibilities too). He rode the good times and was a busted flush here as the going began to get tough. He’s jumped ship to a club about to ride a big wave of investment. He’s an opportunist is a polite way of putting it. Just to follow up on your point RW this summer’s signing - the reason Nige has spent a few quid on transfers is because: he’s cut the wage bill (Bristol Post suggesting by a third - no mean feat, I’m not sure it’s quite that high from my estimates) he’s cut amortisation millstone going forward by about £6m p.a for the next two seasons, and another £5.5m in 23/24 Mark Ashton loaded the accounts with future costs. It looks great to make £25m net in player sales in the 19/20 season, but if you spend £25m on fees plus all the other associated costs, you load costs in over future years. Under MA with LJ and DH (even though DH wasn’t given much in way of transfer funds) they retained a large playing squad at a huge cost, disproportionate to income, and therefore the only way of staying “in budget / FFP” was to sell players. Early days indeed, but not unreasonable to say we might well be getting more for our money with Nige in charge.

TWTD forum is a delight this morning. I’m stirring!! ???

I agree. Think he will’ve seen the light of working without Ashton. He’d have come here last summer if so.

That’s brilliant to hear (about Nige, not the bit about Ashton). ??????

Great minds. I was looking at CH last night and seeing if MA was now director at Ipswich, he is. I had a look at Gamechanger quickly but didn’t check the year. Mike O’Leary - West Brom, Oxford, Alicydon Ltd, Ipswich Mark Ashton - ditto As we know already. There is no doubt that Mark Ashton took his eye off the ball here, and Steve Lansdown took his eye off of Mark Ashton.

It was CB in a 4 on Saturday, Tinman tweeted me because BBC had him right wing, just like last night. Wyscout hasn’t done it’s overnight update yet, but they’ve listed in squad number order in their team sheet (not pitch graphic) and if BBC use that ordering then that’s why he’s shown on the wing. No doubt he played CB though. Joe Low showed as right winger on BBC too. Hoping Tinman will reply to my late night tweet. This is from Grimsby’s Academy coach. he was up against Paul Mullin, who was at Cambridge last season.

Towler got 90 in another 3-1 win and Low also 90 in a 4-1 win (Vince Harper got 79 mins)

So the follow-on question is - was Ashton undermining Lansdown / City from that point on, or at least not putting 100% into it?

Imagine the finders fee for being part of the group that introduced Gamechanger to Ipswich. Whether that trip to the US was for SL (City or Bristol Sport) I don’t know. I do recall a mate of mine saying Ashton wasn’t taking City to Florida for the club’s benefit. Gonna ask him to try and recall what he knew. It’s quite possible Covid slowed that down. Let’s see if a certain someone can remember what he said at the time. JET was allegedly on £20k per week at Ipswich, hence why QPR could afford him and we couldn’t. I don’t know whether Cotts thought he could do it at Champ level….too big a risk on those wages. Whilst under contract at Ipswich we were paying half (I think).

My view is that when there’s something to shout about it feels great, but awfully quiet when it’s not. I know that sounds obvious, but it feels like there needs to be a critical mass of people shouting for it to resonate throughout the ground. I wish they’d turn down the pre-game music volume. It think it stops any pre-game chanting.

And he certainly mentioned Williams was in the squad for Saturday (just didn’t make the 18).

I’d heard that he was on gardening leave too….does that mean he had to do the odd bit of media work in the intervening period to cover up that fact?

As usual, the Villa fans ignorant of the rules! I took the trouble to listen last week. It’s where I picked up some of my gems re Celina wanted before speaking to Cook and O’Leary (Chairman) wanting Kyle Edwards / Rakeem Harper (whichever one it is). Would love to ask Mr Morrell is Ashton has really spoken to Joe since he turned Ipswich down? If you didn’t know his “previous form” it all sounds great….he’s a effing bluffer.

Making strides…..signed a 3+1 last September. You could argue why is this necessary, but good that we are reflecting his new status changing from “loanee / fringe” to “first teamer”. Great news.

As an outside looking in at Ipswich it feels like Cook’s heart isn’t in it. That’s poor on his part, but it feels like Cotts when Ashton came back into the club….where in Cotts case he just made himself more and more likely to get sacked, the altercation with a fan being the final straw. I loved Cotts, but was disappointed that he didn’t try to play the game a bit and stay onside in the hope of buying some time and sorting things out. Got to say the dynamic between Cotts and Tomlin would’ve been good to watch, might’ve ended in tears too, but would’ve been interesting. Back to Cook, he’s not been vocal about transfers, is that because he’s accepted his fate, or is it Ashton hogging the limelight? I don’t think Cook will be here by the next international break.

Unfortunately Ashton has a big pal in Mike O’Leary, his Chairman and mentor to some extent from West Brom and Oxford days. The US company state that the pension fund behind this needs to perform, and PL is where the money is. They seem to think the Championship is also financially viable too. That’s surprising, it’s a money-pit. This is gonna give us a good couple of years of interest I reckon. Starting from when Paul Cook gets sacked through to the first set of accounts under this regime, and beyond.

Ipswich are a club with good history, have always been a pretty sensible, well-run and likeable club to the neutral. They deserve better than Mark Ashton imho.

Nancy Frostrick is good, but she mainly writes about Sheffield Wednesday who are Lg1.

When they get promoted, let’s assume it’s this season, all their fans will be expecting momentum, more quality signings (they expect to buy top 6 quality players according to their forum), etc. However, I’m not sure their fans are quite prepared for 1) the cost of top 6 quality players both in fees and wages, 2) their place in the pecking order (low) and 3) how Championship FFP differs from Lg1 FFP. They are able to ride Owner investment in Lg1. They can’t in the Championship. They’ll be wondering why they can’t buy themselves a place in the PL, they could buy Lg1 success. So, what will we say….welcome to real life under Ashton, good luck trying to get rid of those players who aren’t good enough but are on inflated contracts, more inflated because they’ve just had a promotion wage-rise.

Probably not his best week, his father died last week too.

Must’ve landed on a snake then, because he’s gone downwards. Yes, think call was from his agent and SL had contacted the agent.

I agree. Think the term is “itchy chin” ??? I think you’re right too. Think I’ve posted before that (the story is) Cook tried to talk himself out of the job during the actual interview. You can just imagine MA giving it the big ‘in - “the club is centred around me, you’ll report into me, etc”. Just like Cotts in Dec 15, when Ashton returned to do the hatchet job, Cook will know the writing is on the wall for him. It wouldn’t surprise me if his heart isn’t truly in it (which is poor form on his part). He’s been really quiet in terms of signings (not easy to grab the limelight from Ashton admittedly), and you wonder if the apathy is rubbing off on the pitch.

Pretty sure SL did the Sunday morning zoom with Nige. Can’t believe MA wasn’t involved though. But there’s no way SL wasn’t aware MA was off at that point either. I get the impression that SL was getting much more hands-on early in 2021…probably once Maggie had read Kid’s post on here. ? He seemed to be back running the show at the point of Nige’s appointment