Clegg: Candidates already chosen

Ipswich chief executive Simon Clegg has revealed he and owner Marcus Evans began the process of identifying possible successors to outgoing manager Paul Jewell "a number of weeks" ago.

Jewell left Portman Road by mutual consent after Tuesday's third consecutive loss against his former club Derby extended Town's winless streak to 10 matches and left them bottom of the npower Championship.

"We're very clear in terms of the type of individual we want," Clegg told Ipswich Player on the club's official website, www.itfc.co.uk. "Already Marcus and I have been brainstorming for a number of weeks what would happen if we got to this scenario."

He added: "That process, in some respects, has started by the identification of the various candidates and now those discussions will be ramped up going forward."

Jewell replaced Roy Keane as Ipswich boss in January last year following a similarly unsuccessful reign and Clegg accepts he and Evans must call it right this time around.

"I don't want to give too much away at this moment in time but we do realise that the next appointment is a very important one for us," he said.

"We need to get it right and we need to de-risk that process by ensuring that whoever we bring on board we are absolutely confident that they have the skills, the experience, the ability, the drive and the motivation to take us to where we want to go to."

And Clegg moved to assure fans that the next man in the Portman Road hotseat would enjoy similar levels of financial backing to those provided by Evans for Keane and Jewell.

"We're still incredibly ambitious individuals and we're ambitious for the football club," he added.

"Marcus will continue to back the football club, continue to back the next manager in the way that he has backed the last couple of managers and through that we would expect success."