It was another nightmare on Sky. We kicked off and after just 17 seconds found ourselves a goal down and it went from bad to worse.
Nottingham Forest came to Portman Road having not won on their travels so far this season and yet they defeated us comfortably so where are we going wrong?
Manager Mick McCarthy hinted afterwards that playing a more creative midfield meant that our defence was more vulnerable – although he was quick to point out that the midfield were not entirely responsible for the goals.
The reason our defence has looked so good on paper in the past, is because we have an outstanding keeper in Bartosz Bialkowski and when McCarthy employes both Jonathan Douglas and Cole Skuse as holding midfielders he is effectively defending the defence!
As the Sky commentator succinctly pointed out, if you don’t have anyone going forward you are not going to score.
The truth is that we are far too negative at home and our manager is far too fearful of the opposition. Forest were in 21st place in the Sky Bet Championship and five points adrift of us before kick off and there has to be a reason for this because the league table does not lie. They played as if the roles were reversed.
Sadly, we shot ourselves in the foot so early in the game that any confidence we may have had before the start quickly evaporated and there was little in our attacking movements that got supporters off their seats.
The one notable exception was some delightful interplay between Tom Lawrence, who flicked the ball through to McGoldrick with a back heel before his mazy run ended in a fine save by the Nottingham Forest keeper Vladimir Stojkovic.
We huffed and puffed but lacked any sort of real passion. It makes me wonder whether the boss has lost the dressing room because on this kind of showing it looks as if he must be close to it.
The only bright spot on a very dark night at Portman Road was the performance of wing back Josh Emmanuel. He looked very assured on the ball and has pace and no shortage of skill either but the rest of the team failed to ignite the home support.
The referee Peter Bankes did not endear himself to the crowd either, with some dubious refereeing decisions when he turned down two strong penalty appeals but on this showing, we would probably have missed them anyway!
As the players were booed off again at the end of another depressing Town performance, we must all ask ourselves how much more of all of this dreadful football fare can we stand?
Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich
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