If he is not fired, I will leave the Ipswich town football head coach, as he has a misunderstanding with his player.
I will step down as the head coach of the Ipswich Town football team if he is not fired because of a disagreement with a player.
Joey Barton chose to “test the boundaries of their psychology” by calling Paul Lambert’s team the worst in the club’s history as Ipswich Town was riding high in League One.
His theory has a certain amount of rationality. Since Ipswich had not participated in English football’s third division for 62 years, “nobody else really could be worse, could they?”
But Barton ended up “with an egg on my face” because Ipswich defeated Fleetwood 1-0 at home in October of last year. Later, several pieces inspired by Barton’s critical evaluation were found by Highbury Stadium cleaners pinned to the inside of the away dressing room door.
“It clearly backfired,” he said, looking across Portman Road five months later, his face showing the satisfaction of having finally silenced some of the doubters after a 1-0 victory over the same opponent that sent Fleetwood into the League One play-offs and Ipswich down to ninth.
In Suffolk, the evening had been uneasy. Just prior to kickoff, there were demonstrations against Lambert and Marcus Evans, the owners of Ipswich, which came to an end with the final whistle. Barton thought his squad was “drawn into the negativity” at some points throughout the game, which caused the game’s tempo to drop from what he desired. Discord on the terraces helped Fleetwood in the end, even though tiredness was setting in, and Barton wondered if the challenge would have been different if “the place was rocking.”
Barton claimed that just 88 of the 15,678 supporters inside a partially packed Portman Road were from Fleetwood. Normally, you would state that this was a match between the smallest and second-biggest clubs in the league, behind Sunderland. There were eight divisions separating Ipswich, who were winning on the same field against Inter Milan in the UEFA Cup in 2001, from Fleetwood, who were halfway through a campaign in the North West Counties League Division One, where they would finish 14th out of 23 semi-professional teams, many of whom were only paid expenses. Fleetwood had qualified for Europe by finishing fifth in the top flight.
While Ipswich has since experienced low points in cup competitions, Benjamin Bloom, a presenter on the Blue Monday podcast, concluded that Fleetwood was likely the worst league performance of the century. Bloom was sitting in the main stand not far from Lambert in his technical area, where Lambert was frequently seen standing with his arms folded and staring down at the ground.
Barton’s squad defeated Ipswich, a team with two stands named for managers whose accomplishments with England had earned them knighthoods of the realm; Sir Alf Ramsey was the first such manager. In fact, Barton had viewed the documentary More Than a Manager on Sir Bobby Robson, a player well-known for his allusions to war, which inspired him to take on supposedly more formidable foes during the five-hour trip from Fleetwood to Ipswich.
It seems that Barton had called upon part of that spirit. He thought, “Ipswich will be really disappointed to have lost a key game to a promotion rival,” before teasing the “Ipswich faithful” in his final remarks.
Neil Warnock, who has received an unprecedented eight promotions overall, is reportedly in line to succeed Lambert in the event that he is fired. Ipswich will suffer a third straight loss if they fall short against Coventry City, who now sit atop the table.
Lambert doesn’t think he’ll be let go anytime soon. He agreed to a new five-year contract in September after the season got off to a positive start, but the agreement wasn’t finalized until New Year’s Day. Two sources close to the manager and the club have informed The Athletic that there is no clause allowing him to depart without pay, despite reports that he could be released at the conclusion of the season if he doesn’t make the playoffs.
However, Evans’s decisions will determine the club’s destiny, as for the first time since he bought it in 2007, he is facing significant criticism from supporters. When fans urged general manager Lee O’Neill to sell the team on Tuesday, he was there and sat next to him. What kind of response will he get? According to a second source from inside the team, Evans’s greatest accomplishment since purchasing Ipswich has been his ability to deflect criticism from himself. If Lambert is fired, it would be his sixth firing in less than 13 years as manager.
According to a former employee, Evans had long paid his managers well and relied on their ability to run the team—or practically run the club—in his absence. Evans was born in Suffolk and currently resides in at least three different nations. Although he is a wealthy individual, people who provide him with advice claim that his net worth is far less than the £800 million that is frequently brought up in discussions about his journey since starting an events company in 1983.
Lambert may get the impression that history is repeating itself. He was accustomed to working alone during the Randy Lerner era at Aston Villa in a previous life, but he never discussed the difficulties of that partnership in public, restraining himself from briefing reporters on the club’s issues behind closed doors.
It would be reasonable for Lambert to question whether having Evans on the ground more frequently would lift the spirits at Ipswich. Could he speak to the people during critical times? Or will Lambert turn out to be a firefighter? Evans has never offered assurances without paying someone else to do so. Someone with more insider knowledge of the circumstances says, “It’s highly unlikely he’ll ever change his approach.”
The work being done at Ipswich behind the scenes has inspired Lambert, especially the endeavor to reestablish a connection with the town. With the club’s original community effort disbanded ten years ago, free coaching in schools and youth centers came to an end. According to another source, “at least there’s an option to feel a part of the club at an early age,” even though some parents are now required to pay for these coaching sessions.
However, Lambert had warned football pals at the beginning of the season that Ipswich wouldn’t guarantee a return to the Championship. After discussions over the summer, it was decided that Evans would not be spending a lot of money to get the team back into the championship, thus he would need to revitalize the team through its academy. Because of this, Lambert has given academy players nine debuts in a season that has only included one fee-paying signing and one small loan purchase during the January transfer window.
Ipswich had “once been the blueprint of how to run a medium-sized football club,” a former player told The Athletic. Given its Suffolk catchment region, it might have a sizable fan base. The athlete claims, “The interest is still enormous, and that puts a lot of pressure on me.” However, certain landmarks and information serve as a reminder of the club’s actual location. One of the signs on Portman Road was blue for a very long time, while the color of the other sign bleached when it faced the sun on pleasant summer days. The player laments, “For years, nobody thought to change it, to smarten the place up.” “It seemed as though they were neglecting the minor details.”
