McCarthy Says Jonas Has Got Better And Better

‘Considering we took 8 million in for Tyrone Mings and signed him for 300,00 quid that’s a pretty good deal that for me,’ said manager Mick McCarthy and he has certainly improved as the season has progressed of this there is little doubt.

But MK Dons manager Karl Robinson said the club should have invested in the squad with the money they received from Dele Alli’s move to Tottenham in 2015 and if they had have done they might not have been relegated from the Sky Bet Championship!

The same could be said for Ipswich Town and their lack of ambition. We might not have expected all of the 8 million windfall to be spent on players but we bought nobody – not even when we needed to most, in the January transfer window.

Of course loan players and freebies cost money too and no player comes cheap these days but I was enormously disappointed with our inability to see the obvious, when key players became injured at a critical time in the campaign.

That in my view was the reason we failed to make the play-off places and it cost us dearly in the end.

As for Jonas Knudsen, it is good to see that he is starting to find his football feet in England because there was always likely to be a transitional period he would have to overcome but more recently it looks as if he is getting over it.

I suppose after Aaron Creswell and Tyrone Mings we suspected that they would be hard acts to follow and so it has proved but there are encouraging signs that he is starting to fit in.

Next season will be a big test for him I feel. He has already played 42 games for the blues this term and that is largely because manager Mick McCarthy showed faith in him – even when he was struggling and his patience is now being rewarded.

On Saturday at Portman Road we entertain MK Dons – although given our more recent performances perhaps I should guard against using the word ‘entertain.’

This encounter is very much a dead-rubber and I would not expect a big crowd for a game that means so little to both clubs.

That said, it would be nice to see us win our last home game of the season – if only by way of small compensation for an abysmal home record that did more damage than anything else in our bid to gain promotion from the championship.

Frank Weston – editor of Vital Ipswich