Another Must Win Game For Town.

Such is the competitive nature of the Sky Bet Championship that there is no such a thing an easy game anymore. Top beats bottom on a regular basis and anyone can beat anyone on any given day.

Tomorrow at Portman Road Town will have to be at their best to beat an in-form and inspired Rotherham United, who have gone four games unbeaten and last time out came back from the dead against Derby County, when they scored three goals in the last seven minutes to gain an unlikely point.

This is their longest unbeaten spell this season and under the expert guidance of new boss Neil Warnock they have become a very potent force and the blues will know that even if they do get in front it might not be forever!

Let us hope that goalkeeper Bartosz Bialkowski continues to excel because since he came back into the team he has been fantastic!

Our current number two Dean Gerken is expected to miss out again as he has not trained and is suffering from the same kind of virus that laid him low a week or so ago and this means that Michael Crowe will be on the bench again.

New arrival Liam Feeney is expected to start which is just as well because we will need plenty of good attacking options against this Yorkshire outfit who no longer seem to know the word defeat!

The slightly better news for the blues is that we have won six of our last seven meetings with Rotherham, netting twice or more in all of those six victories but we should take this game for granted at our peril because I think the blues will do exceptionally well to win it and whether we go a goal up or a goal down, I fear we will have a proverbial mountain to climb.

The man to watch for them is undoubtedly Danny Ward who has been responsible for creating nine of Rotherham United’s last fourteen goals so most of their attacking ideas stem from him.

Of course our very own Daryl Murphy netted twice in midweek, ending a run of 669 minutes and 37 seconds without a goal and usually when he finds the net again there is a flourish of activity from his left foot and we will need all the help we can get tomorrow afternoon.

The Millers will give a late test to Richard Wood who is suffering with a tight hamstring but Rotherham have utility man Greg Halford back after his one-match ban and he is set to replace Paul Green.

I do not expect many changes from our midweek win against Blackburn Rovers and this is very much another must-win game for Town if we are serious about those play-off places.


Frank Weston – editor of Vital Ipswich