Is He Starting To Lose The Plot?

Is manager Paul Cook losing the plot? His attempts to keep misfit winger Gwion Edwards at the club were baffling, to put it mildly. In fairness, Town supporters had seen a lot more of Edwards than our manager and his coaching staff had seen, but I thought they would have seen enough to know he was not up to much. We know Edwards is a flair player with undoubted technical ability, but he became woefully profligate with it.

He always tried to take on another man on the byeline when a cross was the easy option, and when he did eventually get the ball over, he was an expert at finding the goalkeeper’s gloves. His free-kicks were also invariably misplaced and either went into the wall – or into the stands behind the goal. In one instance, he took a free kick that missed the goalmouth entirely and ended up in the stand that faced the pitch. Cook was present that day.

Now we hear that Cook is happy to see Flynn Downes leave the club. Why? Is the player unsettled again? I remember, as the wheels came off our promotion push, Downes put in a transfer request to try to force a move to Crystal Palace, but I assumed that this was water under the bridge. The Eagles had two bids in the region of £2million turned down by the Tractor Boys, but Downes was determined to go to the Premier League club. In the end, owner Marcus Evans did not approve the move, and Downes spent several months in the reserves under former boss Paul Lambert, by way of punishment for his audaciousness!

Lee O’Neill, Ipswich’s general manager of football operations said at the time, “We have received two bids for Flynn over the last week or two, but they are nowhere near the club’s valuation. Marcus rejected them straight away, and he has spoken personally to Flynn to make him aware of the club’s position. We fully understand why a move to the Premier League would appeal to him, but until the club receives an offer that meets our valuation, there is no decision to make. We want to keep Flynn here because he is seen as a key part of our plans.”

So then, have things changed? Flynn Downes is, in my view, one of the few players at Cooks disposal who is worth keeping, so why should he imply that he is surplus to requirements? I find some of the decisions made by our manager recently rather bewildering, and the news that Barnsley are reportedly set to launch a bid to sign Ipswich Town’s homegrown star Flynn Downes is very disappointing. The question that we need to ask too is whether this is a good fit for Downes. He is a talented 21-year-old with ambition but is a move to South Yorkshire really his calling?

Barnsley are not Crystal Palace. They are a Championship side. I doubt whether they could afford anything like as much as Palace offered, so let’s hope that club is not persuaded to sell.