Ipswich Town boss Paul Lambert will not 'protect' owner Marcus Evans after Aston Villa experience
In a lengthy interview with talkSPORT this afternoon, under pressure Ipswich Town manager Paul Lambert has insisted he will not 'protect' owner Marcus Evans like he did Randy Lerner at Aston Villa.
Last night's 0-0 home draw with relegation-threatened Northampton Town further angered the disillusioned Ipswich fanbase, the majority of whom are keen to see the club part ways with Lambert.
Evans, meanwhile, has long faced criticism from the club's supporters for a lack of investment and a string of bad decisions.
It was similar for those of a Villa persuasion with Lerner, who appointed Lambert during the summer of 2012.
Asked by the radio station about the situation at Portman Road, Lambert said: “Marcus Evans has put an incredible amount of money into the football club. I understand that, it’s a hard, hard gig running a football club because of the amount of money they must put in is incredible.
“But you need an infrastructure where everybody at Ipswich Town has to get round a table and say ‘Where are we going here? What are we doing? What’s the infrastructure here?’. Because this needs to stop, this needs to stop.
“We have to have dialogue, we have to have a discussion. I’m not going to come here (and criticise him) because he’s always been good with me, he tells me how it is, we have dialogue. But the football club needs him to say what’s going to happen with the structure. I think that’s the way it should be.
“The big thing for me is I did the same at Aston Villa, protected Randy Lerner for a long, long time. It was like a lamb to a slaughter what was happening there.
“I can’t do that again, I can’t go through that again. There’s got to be a structure where everybody gets around a table.
“Everybody’s to blame, everybody, not one person where you can turn around and say you’re blaming that one or that one. Everybody has to look at themselves, look in the mirror and say where it went wrong. And I think that’s the big thing for Ipswich.”
Lambert was also asked for his reaction to Monday's protests at the training ground by independent supporters' group Blue Action.
It forced Lambert to cancel training, and he has described those involved as not being 'true Ipswich fans'.
He said: “The scenes at the training ground the other day, I don’t think it was true Ipswich fans, I think that’s one thing to say. I don’t think that’s the way it should have been dealt with or anything like that.
“We had a young team out last night, we were actually training against a younger team and it’s probably the first time they’ve probably seen things like that and were wondering what’s actually going on, what football is about.
“In a way it can be a good thing for them because they can see the pitfalls of football if things don’t go right for their own careers, they can see a lot of stuff there. But morally it was wrong what they did, but, as I say, I don’t class them as real Ipswich fans.”
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