The model is very simple, you buy cheap young players who will go on to be the greatest players ever to play the game, they then become the greatest players by leading us to glory and then you sell them for billions of pounds.
When we sold Ross Stewart for a massive profit we all dealt with it by remembering that he was actually made of cheese strings and classroom chalk and would spend more time injured than banging goals in – he wasn’t really playing for us so no problem in letting him go to Southampton’s physio room instead of ours.
But Jack Clarke is different. Having been a fundamental part of the promotion season, he then played a key role in the holy trinity of our first season back in the Championship alongside Roberts and Amad. I’d actually argue he was the third of the three that year but, nevertheless, he played a big part in making us all think this league might be easy.
Last year, without Amad and for large parts of the season without Paddy on the right hand side, Clarke stood alone as the quality attacking player in the team. He quickly realised we didn’t have strikers to actually pass it to and so, in a lot of games, created the move to open up the space and finished the move himself. There’s something about him cutting in on the corner of the penalty area where, if he doesn’t curl it in to the keepers left you feel cheated that his magical powers have failed.
Unquestionably a very talented player who was always likely to move to the Premier League, but could we tempt him to stay and try and get promoted with us or would an offer come in that met his valuation as far as the model was concerned? We now have the answer. And our profit exceeds that for Ross Stewart, so good business. But where will the money be spent? Presumably on young players with potential again. If that’s the case, those of us who accept the model will be happy.
For those who consider the model to be wrong, this is us selling our star player and weakening the team. I feel their pain. I really do. They are convinced that this cycle makes it impossible to be promoted. But after the first couple of games it appears we’re not planning to do everything through Jack Clarke as we did last year. So, not only are we less predictable on a Saturday afternoon, but also we should miss him less than we would have done a year ago. If the only departure before the end of next week is Clarke and the rumoured signings are all made… who knows. I’m not convinced it’s the terrible deal some are suggesting.
As a teenager Clarke moved to a big Premier League team from a small club in Yorkshire and failed to impress either at Spurs or during his loans at QPR and Stoke. It was Sunderland where he found his groove and a slightly ridiculous hair band, scoring around 1 in 4 across around 100 games. But why leave the Stadium of Light?
Is this move about money or his desire to challenge himself at the biggest clubs in world football? Well, those familiar with his immense quality will not be surprised that he’s moving to one of the massive clubs of English football and will inevitably be fighting for the title this season… what?... Ipswich?... FFS. That answers that then.
This of course raises another question which those happy and those who hate the model can agree on – if a Premier League (for a year) Ipswich can afford wages so substantially higher than a team pushing for promotion from the Championship, is the problem the wage structure more than how we buy and sell players? Perhaps that’s a question for another day. If Dan Ballard and Chris Rigg were prepared to sign it can’t be that bad. Can it?
Thank you, Jack, for a cracking three years. You’ve always given your best for the team, you’ve scored some belters, some of them in key games and we’ve loved you making defenders look stupid. If all goes well from here, we’ll pass you and your massive bank balance next May. Hope you enjoy the footballing hotbed of Suffolk.
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