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were bottom of the championship but mccarthy successfully guided the club out of the relegation zone to finish in a comfortable 14th place since then he has registered three successive top ten finishes his first full season in 2013 14 ended in a respectable ninth place before he led them to the play offs in 2014 15 last season ipswich came a somewhat disappointing seventh but this was still ahead of many wealthier clubs as mccarthy pointed out this is the first year that it s been a struggle to an extent he has been a victim of his own success as he reached the play offs on a shoestring budget getting the most out of a fairly average squad merry christmas mr lawrence this reinforced the cautious approach of marcus evans who has frequently spoken of his determination to take ipswich to the premier league since he bought 87 5 of the club in december 2007 but has equally often been accused of lacking the ambition to do so evans summarised his philosophy last month my view based on the finances available to us compared to those with parachute budgets and the small group with often short term huge owner investment is for the club to maintain a sustainable and consistent strategy which i firmly believe provides a foundation each season for a promotion challenge he then outlined the key elements of his strategy in summary a focus on the academy a competitive wage structure careful use of our transfer budget on developing players and a stable management team are factors which i believe provide us with the best chance of promotion out of the championship which is one of the toughest and getting even tougher leagues in the world managing director ian milne was singing from the same song sheet marcus has gone for sustainability and mick understands that you can achieve good things through getting the right people in your club and working as a team from top to bottom a grant don t come for free while all this is undoubtedly true the concern is that this conservative stance will mean a continuation of the 15 year groundhog day existence that ipswich have held in the championship or equivalent since relegation from the top flight in 2002 to paraphrase u2 it feels like ipswich are stuck in a moment and they can t get out of it initially evans provided his managers with enough funding to be competitive in the transfer market but this did not achieve the desired objective as first roy keane then jewell essentially wasted the owners cash with a series of poor choices not only did these expensive purchases not deliver on the pitch but they ended up being offloaded for peanuts leading to large financial losses arising from misplaced recruitment having had his fingers burnt evans opted for a change in strategy i wanted to work with a manager who was going to try to and coach and make our players better rather than give the manager the opportunity to simply buy players don t luke back in anger the owner explained you would have hoped that money had resulted in better things but look at nottingham forest they lost 25 million last year and got nowhere there are a lot of clubs out there that spent a lot more than ipswich did and who ended up in exactly the same situation the drive to more sensible cost management was also influenced by the introduction of the financial fair play rules which essentially aim to force clubs to live within their means as a result in the past few years ipswich have focused on free transfers loans and swap deals while trying to bring through young players from the academy into the first team as milne explained we do have a very good scouting network and that enables us to get players at the minimum transfer fee consequently ipswich have averaged annual gross spend of only 0 5 million in the last four seasons though the january 2017 transfer window has not yet closed compared to 5 6 million a season in the first three years of the evans era in the same periods average net spend of 4 million has flipped to average net sales of 4 million an 8 million reduction last summer s spending was a good example of ipswich s policy two promising young players were acquired in the shape of grant ward from tottenham hotspur and adam webster from portsmouth at a combined cost of 1 4 million while there were a couple of free transfers including the veteran journeyman leon best from rotherham united evans argued that there was also money splashed out on loan fees and wages needed to tempt premier league clubs to release players including welsh internationals tom lawrence from leicester city and jonny williams from crystal palace and conor grant from everton but ipswich supporters would justifiably point out that the club failed to replace forward daryl murphy who was sold to newcastle united ipswich s parsimony can be seen by looking at the gross spend of championship clubs this season when only six clubs spent less than the tractor boys these included two clubs with transfer embargoes blackburn rovers and nottingham forest plus a few minnows i e preston north end burton albion rotherham united and wigan athletic the more meaningful comparison is with clubs seeking promotion as evans himself noted newcastle and norwich spent more than 100 million between them on transfer fees in the august window as they chase an immediate return to the premier league although this was actually factually incorrect his point was still valid as newcastle and aston villa have spent 55 million and 52 million respectively other big spenders include fulham 22 million derby county 14 million wolverhampton wanderers 11 million and bristol city 11 million many managers would use this low spending as an excuse for not meeting their objectives but mccarthy is made of sterner stuff saying that he won t stamp his feet over the restricted transfer budget given to him by evans instead he sees it as his job to get more out of the players he s got that said he would like his achievements to be recognised i ve done a bloody good job under the terms and conditions i ve sold murphy i ve sold mings and others and we ve stayed competitive despite this prudent policy ipswich reported a 6 6 million loss in 2015 16 a 12 1 million deterioration from the previous year s 5 5 million profit though this was almost entirely due to a 11 5 million reduction in profits on player sales these dropped from 12 2 million in 2014 15 due to the sales of tyrone mings to bournemouth and aaron creswell to west ham to only 0 6 million the wage bill rose by 0 6 million 4 from 16 0 million to 16 6 million as further funds were invested in the squad to challenge for the play off positions other expenses also increased by 0 3 million 6 to 5 4 million but player amortisation dropped by 0 5 million 74 to just 0 2 million revenue slightly decreased by 0 1 million 1 mainly due to a 0 4 million 9 reduction in commercial income to 4 4 million offset by broadcasting income rising by 0 3 million 6 to 5 4 million gate receipts were unchanged at 6 5 million as the club s share of receipts from the league cup tie against manchester united at old trafford compensated for a fall in attendances and the money from the previous season s play off appearance although a 7 million loss might not sound overly impressive it has to be assessed in the context of england s second tier where the harsh reality is that most clubs are loss making largely as a result of their natural desire to reach the lucrative premier league in this way none of the championship clubs that have so far published their 2015 16 accounts has been profitable with some reporting hefty losses brighton and hove albion 26 million hull city 21 million reading 15 million and bristol city 15 million as evans lamented wouldn t it be nice if you could turn a profit in the championship but i m afraid that s not the case one way a football club can compensate for operating losses is via player sales but championship clubs have struggled to make big money sales with the highest amount reported so far last season being hull city s 13 million and they had premier league players to offload following relegation in 2015 however ipswich s profit on player sales of 0 6 million was one of the lowest in the division in contrast to 2014 15 when their 12 1 million profit was only surpassed by norwich city s 14 million of course next year s accounts will be boosted by the 3 million sale of daryl murphy to newcastle ipswich have only reported a profit once in the evans era the 5 million in 2014 15 losing money in the other eight years however it is noticeable that the losses have been reducing effectively capped at 7 million in the past three seasons as milne explained in 2012 the annual losses peaked at 16 million and we started to go down a slightly different route that was actually the third worst loss in the championship that year and served as a major wake up call the reason for this large deficit were given by finance director mark andrews we brought in some experienced players in the 2011 12 season paul jewell s first season in charge which kept the playing squad costs high however ipswich s best results in recent times have been boosted by large profits on player sales as seen in 2014 15 without the sales of mings and cresswell the reported profit of 5 5 million would have been a loss of 6 7 million i e in line with the 7 million losses in 2013 14 and 2015 16 it was a similar story in 2011 12 when this activity contributed 10 8 million largely due to the transfers of connor wickham to sunderland for 8 million and jon walters to stoke city for 2 75 million without these sales ipswich would have registered another big loss of 14 million the owner has said that his funding would eventually be unsustainable without the benefits of transfer revenues from time to time to offset the club s running costs interestingly the club has made more money from cheap young players rather than experienced professionals this was acknowledged by evans we lost some good players in the past who were out of contract i e could leave for very little or even nothing to get an idea of underlying profitability and how much cash is generated football clubs often look at ebitda earnings before interest depreciation and amortisation as this metric strips out player trading and non cash items in ipswich s case this highlights the changed strategy after 2012 as ebitda has improved from minus 9 million in 2012 to minus 6 million in 2016 though this was a million worse than the previous year this might not sound overly impressive as it is still negative but it has to be put into the context of the championship where very few clubs manage to generate cash apart from blackpool with their unique approach to running a football club no championship has reported ebitda higher than 1 5 million in the last two seasons in stark contrast to the premier league where in the same period every club enjoyed positive ebitda except the basket case that is qpr revenue has fallen by 1 million 6 from the recent 17 2 million peak in 2011 which was boosted by reaching the carling cup the semi final and a profitable fa cup match at chelsea all revenue streams have fallen since then especially commercial income which is 13 0 7 million lower though this is partly due to a decision to outsource catering and thus only including net royalty payments in revenue gate receipts have rebounded even though attendances have fallen partly due to ticket price increases following the slight reduction in 2015 16 ipswich s revenue of 16 million remains firmly in the bottom half of the championship a long way behind the top three clubs who all earned more than 40 million of course to a large extent this only demonstrates the importance of parachute payments for those clubs relegated from the premier league this is clearly a sore point for evans the average parachute club starts with a 20 million per season head start over the rest of us he added the lack of parity in the game certainly makes it harder to compete this season there were nine clubs benefiting from parachute payments and there will be something similar next year that gives them a massive financial advantage if these parachute payments were to be excluded the gap would obviously reduce but ipswich s 16 million would still be a fair way behind many other clubs e g brighton 25 million leeds united 24 million and derby county 21 million given these stats ipswich s performance in the last three seasons is worthy of some praise the mix of ipswich s revenue has changed over the years with broadcasting rising from 13 in 2009 to 33 in 2016 and commercial falling from 41 to 27 however match day remains the most important revenue stream at 40 even though it has declined from 46 unsurprisingly this means that ipswich are one of the championship clubs most reliant on gate receipts in percentage terms only four clubs had a higher dependency in 2014 15 nottingham forest charlton athletic brighton and millwall gate receipts were flat at 6 5 million in 2015 16 even though average attendance fell by 644 3 as this was offset by one additional home cup game nevertheless ipswich s match day revenue is the 9th highest in the championship though still around 3 million lower than brighton 9 4 million and leeds united 9 2 million ipswich s average attendance of 18 959 was actually the 8th best in last season s championship but a fair way behind clubs like derby county 29 663 brighton 25 583 and middlesbrough 24 627 ipswich s attendances had been on a declining trend for a number of years but the charge to the play offs resulted in an upswing in 2014 15 however they have started to fall again since then with a further slump this season to 16 789 which means that ipswich have lost a third of their crowd since the recent 25 651 peak in 2004 05 evans is acutely aware of the reduction in spectators we can t deny that attendances have been falling away somewhat this season an indication of the disappointing results we have had this year he said that the club was looking at creative ways of getting supporters back to portman road these include low prices for youngsters e g the season ticket for under 11s has been held at just 10 for nine successive years interest free direct debit monthly payment scheme and discounts with local businesses if ipswich are promoted to the premier league the season ticket will be upgraded at no extra price plus the holder will be given a free season ticket however fundamentally ipswich s ticket prices are among the most expensive in the second tier according to the bbc s price of football survey no other fans in the championship pay more for the most expensive season ticket while town s prices for the cheapest season ticket are only surpassed by three clubs brighton newcastle and norwich city from 2003 to 2013 season ticket prices had remained frozen for seven out of the 11 years however prices have gone up every year since 2014 15 including a 1 5 increase for the 2017 18...