Burley's up to the challenge

Ipswich are staring relegation in the face, but, as he tells Roy Collins, manager George Burley is not prepared to go down without a fight

Among the hundreds of framed documents and press cuttings charting Ipswich's continuing history in the Portman Road directors' corridor - which include the programme cover from George Burley's testimonial - there is also an article by the manager ridiculing the idea that they will go down.

"I know many keen football fans are saying that Ipswich have had it," he writes. "They are saying we will be relegated all right. But don't believe a word of it because I won't allow it to happen."

The author was not Burley, but Scott Duncan in the 1954-55 season when, despite his optimism, Ipswich were relegated to the old Division Three South and he lost his job to a young whippersnapper named Alf Ramsey.

Ipswich could hardly have been accused of acting impetuously as Duncan had spent 17 years as manager. Even though Burley's team will be relegated today for the second time in his seven years as manager if Sunderland beat Charlton and Ipswich lose to Manchester United, he has no reason to fear the sack.

When Ipswich went down in 1995, the chairman David Sheepshanks drew up a five-year plan that seemed to have a helping hand from Sisyphus, since for three years in succession Burley led his team to the play-offs only to end up back where he started. Now, after just two seasons back in the Premiership, he faces starting all over again.

"If we go down, I think we have the quality to come straight back," he says. "But I love this job, love the people I work with here and I've learned a lot of things in the past 12 months.

"Perhaps most importantly, because we did so well last season, I was looking to change things to make us even better and now I realise that change is not always the answer.

"When you finish fifth, as we did last season, you think, let's go out and get some new players to improve even more. But paying two or three million for players these days is not enough to improve your squad in the Premiership. We also found it hard playing Thursday, Sunday, Thursday to accommodate UEFA Cup games but the players have got to face up to the fact that they haven't done enough this season."

Wednesday's 1-0 win over Middlesbrough, Ipswich's first in 11 games, offers a lifeline, albeit a frayed and slippery one, to secure their Premiership status.

Even the best scenario for Ipswich - Sunderland losing both their final games - leaves Burley's team needing to produce two points from the games against Manchester United at Portman Road this evening and Liverpool at Anfield a fortnight today.

Because of the ludicrous manipulations of kick-off times, Ipswich's target may have grown to six points by the time they run out if Sunderland manage a victory at Charlton in the midday game.

And when you offer a crumb of comfort by suggesting that United, with their gaze focused on Tuesday's Champions League semi-final second leg in Germany, Burley almost chokes on it.

"Manchester United don't have reserves," he says. "They have a squad of international players. They are even going to play Roy Keane in order to get him fit for Europe, yet he is the one who makes them play. That shows the difference between our clubs."

Seven years ago, when Ipswich finished rock bottom with only 27 points from 42 games, they were relegated before Easter and, Burley admits, were regularly humiliated by opponents, most notoriously when they lost 9-0 at Old Trafford.

The current squad, says Burley, is much more resilient, though he was forced to call a team meeting after the capitulation to Bolton three weeks ago, where victory could have offered them genuine hope.

He says: "We had a real heart-to-heart on the Monday after that. The game was a real shocker and I found myself thinking, this is not the group of players I know. But they admitted letting everyone down.

"The only other real low point for me was the home defeat by Southampton last month. We had three weeks to prepare for that game and I thought we did everything right by taking the players away and getting them right. But they fell flat on their faces.

"I think the players can work harder and I've told them that. When I was a player, I did a hell of a lot of extra individual stuff.

"I didn't need a trainer. I didn't need a coach. I went out every day to work on my weights programme, my sprints, my passing or my heading.

"These days, players have got coaches, fitness coaches, even psychologists. But at the end of the day, they have got to take responsibility for improving themselves. You read about David Beckham and his free-kicks but that's taking responsibility for wanting to be the best dead-ball kicker and going out to practise, practise, practise. We need more of that.

"If we go down, finances will determine that we change the team but if we stay up the players have got to show me more than they have done this season."

The modern game requiring managers to be as au fait with financial matters as they are with tactics, Burley has already sat down with Sheepshanks to work out the consequences of relegation, which could cost the club £12 million, even allowing for the two years' television parachute money, which, after the ITV Digital crisis, no longer guarantees a gentle landing.

Whatever Ipswich's fate, Burley faces a hard-working summer. If his team stay up, he will be looking to invest in players and, if they go down, he will need to work to bring money into the club.

Anything involving those things can, of course, be shunted into the pending tray for the next few hours.

"If we go down, I want to go down fighting and if we stay up, I want some glimmer of hope." ...

Guardian Service