Has Ipswich Town football club witnessed another false dawn? It would appear so after our pathetic display against Accrington Stanley, which was in complete contrast to our 6-0 thumping of Doncaster Rovers just a few days before. For many years, we have become accustomed to the Doctor Jeckyl and Mister Hyde antics of our team, but this latest episode might rank as the very worst.
We all knew that it would take time to gel. I still predict that it will take us to around Christmas before we show our true colours, but will that be too late for manager Paul Cook? I genuinely hope not, but there is little doubt he is walking on very thin ice. He gambled at the back end of last season when he boldly stated that he wanted a complete clear-out. With the help of CEO Mark Ashton, he got his wish. If we include those loan players, 27 first-team squad members were shown the exit door, and he then replaced them with 19 new faces. Instant success was never on the cards.
The trouble is that we have now moved into October and we find ourselves in 19th place in the League One table and 12 points off those automatic promotion places. Just two wins in our first ten matches speak for itself. Time waits for no man and in the modern game, patience is generally not a virtue. We all thought that we had finally turned the corner against Donny. I was there to witness it, and what a delight it was to see Portman Road rocking again, and supporters cheering off the players after an emphatic victory. We perhaps conveniently choose to ignore the fact that Doncaster were rock bottom, and Cook admitted afterwards that it was hard on the visitors to travel so far, after their recent travels to Plymouth. It was. They looked punch-drunk from the start.
Now let’s put the record straight. I desperately want Paul Cook to succeed as Ipswich Town boss. I admire his honesty in the face of a series of disappointing performances and results, but he knows, as well as everybody else that he is living on borrowed time. We have to stop the rot and Sam Morsey might be the man to save his bacon. On his debut against Doncaster, he was immense, and we finally started to see what Lee Evans could do when he was relieved of the captaincy, scoring a wonderful hat-trick in an emphatic home victory.
What went wrong against Accrington remains a mystery? Was it complacency? Or was it the dogged approach employed by the home side that was our undoing? I think it was a bit of both and more, and although it was the same team that defeated Donny, we were once again playing like strangers.
No one knows what is going on in a players head when he sets foot on a football field. Maybe the night before one of them had a row with the wife, or maybe someone else found out that their child had absconded from school. Any number of possibilities can influence the performance of any player, and as this is a team game, it will have a detrimental effect on how successful a team performs. One thing is certain. It was a very bad day at the office for everyone!
Tonight the Blues face Gillingham in the Papa John’s Trophy at the Priestfield Stadium, and this will be seen as a dress rehearsal for the big one at Portman Road on Saturday, when Town take on Shrewsbury Town, in a game that the Tractor Boys simply have to win.
Cook explained, “We’ve got an opportunity to give a lot of lads games that they really need. It will be a strong Ipswich team looking to win the game. If we’d had a good result (against Accrington) everyone would have been bouncing into the Gillingham game. Unfortunately, we go into it off the back of a disappointing result, where we haven’t played well and where we haven’t competed and done the bread and butter side of football. On the flip side of that, this is now 100% an opportunity for other players to get themselves in my plans for next weekend.”
