Poor Crowd Witness Another Town Bore Draw

This all makes for rather depressing reading if you are a true blue and worse still a season ticket holder!

At Portman Road last night in front of just 15,228 people – the lowest home turn-out for many years, the Tractor Boys got stuck in the mud again but only this time in a metaphorical sense.

They were bogged down by a spate of injuries to key players and were up against a Seagulls side that would have gone second if they had won. In the end, another disappointing draw ensued and the blues rose a single place to 13th in the Championship league table. Unlucky for some perhaps?

Once again there are mitigating circumstances for Town’s sad demise and one of them is our injury crisis which is impacting most upon our attack.

Brett Pitman is likely to be out for close to three months and David McGoldrick is another long term absentee. Luke Varney is also out of action at the moment and Leon Best is still struggling to find full match fitness and was replaced in this one after 61 minutes by Freddie Sears.

Now a couple of season’s ago we would have been overjoyed by his introduction but that was when he was a free scoring forward playing down the middle.

Since he was moved out on the wing his confidence has been shot to pieces and he has not scored in a staggering 36 matches!

The problem lies at the foot of the door of our stubborn manager once again I suspect. When Daryl Murphy left us he had enough time to find a suitable replacement and tried belatedly to do so just before the transfer window slammed shut but it was too little too late. This was all so avoidable with a bit of advanced planning and instead we were priced out of the market place in the end.

McCarthy was rather blase about it at the time I recall, suggesting that we had enough strength in depth in the attacking department to see us through until January or perhaps beyond. Once again it was a serious miscalculation on his part and our attack is now completely threadbare.

Last night Town played quite well in parts and far better than that appalling display at Leeds but once again our inability to carve out any clear cut openings meant that we would either draw or lose this one – even when Brighton were reduced to ten!

Luckily for us, Brighton had a bit of an off-day on the night and for the second time in succession, we had to make do with a goalless draw at Portman Road.

The crowds are getting smaller by the week and so too is the entertainment value. This surely cannot continue forever but it seems like forever since we played some exciting football and forever since we actually scored a goal!

If we were getting close there may be hope but we only had two shots on target in 90 minutes last night and that appears to be the norm these days.

No strikers. No goals. No hope? We will see.


Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich