Murphs Gone But Town Carry On

Brett Pitman was asked to fill the boots of Irish striker Daryl Murphy who was on his way to Newcastle United to have a medical and agree terms on a two year contract.

Also in the Town team was Tommy Smith for his first start of the new campaign and he replaced Adam Webster who had to bench warm.

Murphy has now signed for Newcastle and the question is, how much of a loss he will be? Yesterday, Brett Pitman took full advantage of his starting berth and excelled up front with Freddie Sears, who came desperately close to breaking his 32 game duck.

Two years ago Daryl Murphy was on fire and was the Championship’s leading scorer by quite a distance but since then, injuries and international commitments has meant that we have rarely seen the Daryl Murphy of old and at 33 years he is exactly that!

Strikers usually struggle to get much beyond their early thirties and although he still has all the natural attributes of a seasoned campaigner, there are signs that his sharpness is declining a little, as the sands of time catch up with him.

If you ever did accountancy at college you will know all about that value for depreciation column and we have done rather well to get three million quid for a player who is probably past his best.

One thing we can say with some degree of certainty is that he will not surpass his goal-scoring feats of a couple of seasons ago and he only managed ten league goals last season and none so far this, so how much of a loss will he really be?

Now Mick McCarthy should have some dosh to spend on his replacement but I doubt that all the money culled from this deal will go straight back into his spending kitty.

The rumours still persist that he might give Leon Best a short term deal and that 27 year old Hal Robson-Kanu is presently in talks with Town – although no official statement has been made on the subject but that of course is nothing new.

He is Irish and a free agent so he seems to fit the bill and no transfer fee will surely appeal to our manager.

As for the game against Preston, Town played quite well. Tommy Smith seemed to give our defence a bit more solidity and Brett Pitman seemed to get the best out of Freddie Sears so all things considered this was a very satisfactory performance.

Once again we relied on Grant Ward to break the deadlock when
Kevin Bru’s free-kick was only partially cleared and Ward controlled the ball before firing it in the corner of the net with Preston keeper Anders Lindegaard motionless.

Better still perhaps was the result from Birmingham which saw Norwich City go down by three goals to nil which means that we leapfrog them in the Championship table!


Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich