WHEN you look at the way clubs such as Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Charlton, Leicester, Southampton and Norwich City have slipped from the top flight to the third tier of English football, keeping Ipswich Town on such a sound footing, financially and position-wise, could be regarded as a bigger achievement than getting the Blues promoted in the first place.

Derek Davis

WHEN you look at the way clubs such as Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Charlton, Leicester, Southampton and Norwich City have slipped from the top flight to the third tier of English football, keeping Ipswich Town on such a sound footing, financially and position-wise, could be regarded as a bigger achievement than getting the Blues promoted in the first place.

David Sheepshanks accepts that guiding the Blues to the Premier League, and that glorious day out at Wembley, was great, but seeing the club with genuine big money backing and still considered genuine promotion contenders is a legacy to be proud of.

He kept his word after saying he would steer the club out of administration, and would step aside when it was in safe hands with a promising future.

Sheepshanks said: “The added delight for us was our success was organic. Everything we did in those seven years we did ourselves and that made it all the more rewarding and gratifying.

“I know it will sound bizarre to many people but in many ways what we have achieved in the last seven years, in preventing the club going the way of Leeds, Leicester and now Norwich, Southampton and Charlton, we never got to that stage and we have got it recapitalised with Marcus, is almost greater than what we achieved in the first seven years.”

Sheepshanks is confident that Marcus Evans has the financial clout not just to get Town up but to sustain growth, something the club failed to do before.

He said: “One of the reasons why it was so tough is because the club had never been capitalised very well. It was not in the Cobbold days, it was not in the days of the Pioneer Stand being built thanks to a grant from Pioneer in Japan.

“It was not in 1986/87 when I came on the board when the board then was very unpopular because they had sold all the stars and the final blow for many was when Terry Butcher was sold.

“That was just before my time and I was angry about that and wrote to the club to say so and asked where the ambition was at the club.”