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Oh Dear Me Mr.Clegg.

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Not really paying attention but just caught the BBC Look East Late News and heard about Ipswich CEO Simon Clegg having to give evidence today in a drugs trial at Newcastle Crown Court involving Michael Chopra.Apparently Ipswich loaned Chopra £250,000 to pay off gambling debts and £50,000 of it turned up in the footwell of a Jaguar car connected to four men charged with Class A drug offences according to the prosecution.Chopra owed money to some dodgey characters and has been confronted by debt collectors at the Ipswich training ground according to Clegg.

More info is on the front page of the EADT but me being a technophobe i do not know how to copy and paste.Anyway what wonderful publicity for Ipswich Town   he! he! he!.

I think i know what Lambert,McNally and Bowkett would do with the likes of Chopra if he was on our books and it certainly would not be loan him 250K.

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EADT  Wed December 14th 2011 4:37 PM

A DRUG trial jury has heard Ipswich Town gave Michael Chopra around £250,000

to help pay off loan sharks as the scale of his gambling debts were laid

bare.

The club’s chief executive Simon Clegg was called as a

witness by Newcastle Crown Court to give evidence via a video link from South

East Suffolk Magistrates Court.

When pressed to name a figure for the total debt he understood Chopra, 27, to

have run up, Mr Clegg said: “Somewhere in the region of quarter-of-a-million

pounds.”

Mr Clegg said he understood a “significant percentage” of that figure was due

to gambling.

He added: “They were monies owed to individuals. The best of my knowledge is

they were not institutions, they were individuals, not the sort of people I

would be going to if I wanted to borrow money.

“I was aware Michael was concerned about repaying the money on time. He

needed to pay the money back or he would find himself in trouble.”

Although there is no suggestion Chopra is linked to the alleged drug offences

the court also heard he had been confronted by debt collectors at the club’s

Playford Road training.

Despite the club’s loan the striker still has further debts.

Mr Clegg said: “I feel I have a duty of care for all the players who

represent our football club, to try and support and assist them with any

problems they may have so they can concentrate on what they are employed to do,

which is play football.”

Mr Clegg had also helped arrange for Chopra to have a stay at the

rehabilitation centre which retired footballer Tony Adams helped set up.

He said: “It was with Michael’s support we have managed for him to receive

residential rehab for three weeks with a support organisation called Sporting

Chance.”

Mr Clegg added he knew of Chopra’s plight when he signed for the club six

months ago.

Chopra’s name was connected to the alleged ‘Class A drugs factory’ trial

because it was claimed £50,000 found in the footwell of a Jaguar was drug

money.

However, at start of the defence case it was suggested the cash was actually

a payment made by Chopra as an instalment towards settling what he owed to

creditors in the North of England.

Prosecutors claim Joseph Lewins, 53, of Washington, along with Daniel

Chisholm, 49, of, Millfield, Sunderland, Christopher Bacon, 31, of Sunderland,

and John Somerville, 51, of Newcastle, conspired together to supply class A

drugs between April and November last year.

All four deny the charge. The trial continues.

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My what a classy outfit they are running!

I heard the next Ipswich away kit is going to feature a Burberry print and will only be available in the back room of Suffolk boozers...

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Wow. When you actually have people turning up at the training ground demanding money you know things are getting out of hand. Surely Ipswich must have known about at least some of this stuff before they signed him?

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For all of the laughing and pointing fingers, I have a lot of repect in all honesty for what they were trying to do. To be frank, they have a person with an illness and were doing everything they could to help him, including taking away the preasure that came from owing loan sharks. Id hope if any of our players had an issue the club would intervien and try to help, even if it appears that Ipswich may have made a mistake with the loan and who it would end up funding.

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"Mr Clegg added he knew of Chopra’s plight when he signed for the club six

months ago."

Unfortunately when you haven''t got a pot to p ... in then, as they say, ''beggars can''t be choosers''I''m sure someone at poorman road believed that they could get ''quality'' on the cheap by signing players who most decent clubs would not touch with a barge pole. Bowyer is hardly an ''innocent abroad'' - and worse the paupers have just supposedlybeen trying to bring in the ''squeaky clean'' Tortoise Bramble.A grubby little club in many ways, - and as posted up on here some months back there is still more to come

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Chopra is right at home in ipswich....so thats a gambler,all we need now is the alcoholic, scrapper, marriage wrecker and the set is complete!Lets run a book on who''s next shall we?Oldham are waiting Scummers.

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They owe the council thousands, but can find that sum of money to bail out a guy that they knew was coming with issues. I really want the the club to implode and play conference football for eternity.

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I used to view them as our rivals. I disliked them intensly as rivals but enjoyed that rivalry nonetheless. But now I intensly dislike them for what they are. For they have become a club firmly in the gutter.

 

I wonder how all those local businessmen who were paid 5p in the £1 are taking this news? Or the Council who are owed so much back rent after trying to help them out.

 

The scum have really become scum and the football league would be a better place if they were wound up.

 

I wonder if bluemike or chaval will be gracing us with their presence anytime soon?

 

 

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[quote user="birchfest"]For all of the laughing and pointing fingers, I have a lot of repect in all honesty for what they were trying to do. To be frank, they have a person with an illness and were doing everything they could to help him, including taking away the preasure that came from owing loan sharks. Id hope if any of our players had an issue the club would intervien and try to help, even if it appears that Ipswich may have made a mistake with the loan and who it would end up funding.
[/quote]

 

Birchfest, your sympathies ( I cannot bring myself to repeat the word you actually used....r**p*ct ) are, quite frankly, misguided. If you believe Ipswich Town recruited Chopra in full knowledge of his issues and then put forward such a sum motivated from the goodness of their collective hearts then I have a few bridges I''d like to sell to you. If you ( or anyone else for that matter ) really has sympathy to extend it should be to the decent Ipswich Town fans who are saddened, not at the league position of their club, but how their club has fallen in stature through ill-advised management in all respects. I am not speaking about fans who don''t care how their club achieves forward progress just as long as they do. I''m speaking about fans who have principles and self-respect. Let''s not fool ourselves. Most clubs have both kinds.

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All you council tax payers in Suffolk are quite entitled to write to your council and ask what they are doing about the money they are owed in view of the fact that they can pay known gambling debts. Depending on the response it may be possible to push for administration.

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"I wonder if bluemike or chaval will be gracing us with their presence anytime soon?"

Or any of the ''friends of the binners'' who have cluttered up this board with their sicking attempts at trying to defend the odious behaviour of that grubby little club.

Lets be honest. Chopras problems were that .. problems. Very serious problems not ''ishooooooos'', problems. Anyone who believes the ''story'' about this being a gambling debt being repaid is extremely naive or as with the case previouly with the paupers unwilling for what ever reason to take oin board what is happening,

Yankee doodle might wish to talk about the decnt binners but I don''t remember any loud voices coming from that neck of the woods when they were stiffing local traders, defrauding the taxman or allowing preferential creditors to be paid before they announced the bankruptcy. No complaints when the kitman/team coach driver was sacked so that the red faced buffoon could shove another £25k into his back pocket. No questions or challenges when it was revealed that the secretive arms dealer was charging them full interest on the original £32m debt when he had only paid £6m or £8m for that debt. 

Even now reasoned questions seem to be missing, hidden behind absurd bleats about looking after ''ill players'' which in this case Mr Doodle does make very fair comment.

Why cannot Chopra raise the loan through normal means, set against either his house, future earnings etc ?

Why can this debt not be paid via ''legal'' means rather than cash ?

Exactly who was he supposedly gambling with ?

Gambling has always been used as a means to explain unaccountable sums of cash. Either " I won it at cards, the races etc or I lost it" in similar fashion. Whilst we have no knowledge of exactly what has transpired here the old adage of  ''for evil to flourish it needs only good men to do nothing'' is very applicable here. Unfortunately the past decade or so has shown that poorman road is in very short supply of the latter, as far as their fans go. These simply rustic folk are still under the illusion that the only problems with their grubby little club is that things on the pitch have gone ''slightly awry''.

Chopras problems are not the cause of their woes, they are a result of their woes. £70m in debt to an owner who looks more and more like he is interested in the 8 acres of prime town centre land than the failings of the club. A pee poor squad most of whom are out of contract next June, a clueless chief executive and falling gates and income (year on year).

Mind you they do have a couple of statues, some tin plated replicas stuck behind a rusted up lock and a fair collection of yellowing press cutting so I doubt you will hear too much in the way of questioning or concern from those down the A140. It''s not like any other owners have sold off the land and turfed the club out is it ? Gawd bless ''em in their dull witted ignorance. 

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It''s not debt collectors turning up at the training ground expecting payment ITFC have to worry about; it is the supporters turning up at Portman Road expecting a competitive team.

 

Ipswich has some odious supporters but Yankee is right. We had some poor seasons but we owned assets and our debt was a fraction of theirs. We had a visible owner who had an epiphany and employed a professional CEO. We have a loyal fan base. All of which allowed us to have an absolute adventure in League One in a model of how to rebound from adversity before an even better season to gain promotion before being competitive in the Premier League.

 

I feel less disposed towards clubs like Liverpool who want a greater share of the TV cash and other clubs artificially blown by benefactors.

 

Ipswich Town is an absolute car crash and unlike us relegation to League One might be terminal. But, what goes around comes around and I see no reason to celebrate a rival''s demise above my own clubs success.

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[quote user="YankeeCanary"]

[quote user="birchfest"]For all of the laughing and pointing fingers, I have a lot of repect in all honesty for what they were trying to do. To be frank, they have a person with an illness and were doing everything they could to help him, including taking away the preasure that came from owing loan sharks. Id hope if any of our players had an issue the club would intervien and try to help, even if it appears that Ipswich may have made a mistake with the loan and who it would end up funding. [/quote]

 

Birchfest, your sympathies ( I cannot bring myself to repeat the word you actually used....r**p*ct ) are, quite frankly, misguided. If you believe Ipswich Town recruited Chopra in full knowledge of his issues and then put forward such a sum motivated from the goodness of their collective hearts then I have a few bridges I''d like to sell to you. If you ( or anyone else for that matter ) really has sympathy to extend it should be to the decent Ipswich Town fans who are saddened, not at the league position of their club, but how their club has fallen in stature through ill-advised management in all respects. I am not speaking about fans who don''t care how their club achieves forward progress just as long as they do. I''m speaking about fans who have principles and self-respect. Let''s not fool ourselves. Most clubs have both kinds.

[/quote]I think you misunderstand me, I dont wish to defend their actions, merely suggest that i would hope Norwich would act in a similar way if one of our players got into trouble. Take away the football rivalry and everything going on at that club and it is someone with an addiction who needed help...  imerely suggested that at face value they may have thought they were doing the right thing and I hope we would too.

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I think the point you are missing is the double standards involved. Good decent fans have been shafted by that club in recent years. Local taxpayers continue to be shafted by that club. Their players, like all players of similarly sized clubs, earn obscene amounts of money compared to many of those people the club has ripped off. It''s a strange situation over which to suddenly START to do the right thing.

 

 

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Yes, young master nutty it does appear a sudden about turn by the paupers. Cynics might suggest that Mr Chopra needed some verifiable source to explain where he got such large sums of cash, as did those scoundrels who also needed some verifiable source to explain why there was £50,000 laying about in the foot well of their Jaguar.

My old grandad used to say ''never wrestle with a chimney sweep'' - unfortunately the paupers seem to have a squad that big enough to be Dick Van Dykes backing dancers in Mary Poppins (which is rather apt given the binners delusions about being cockneez).

I''m afraid some of this soot, and how it got to be there, might be a little more closely looked at by Newcastle Crown Court then it is being done on here.

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