The Feel-Good Factor Is Back In Town

Manager Paul Lambert might not have had a lot of success with Ipswich Town on the field, but the football they are playing has brought the feel-good factor back and supporters and players are feeling the benefits of his positivity.

The atmosphere at Portman Road is amazing these days, and there is one person and one person only responsible for this and it is Paul Lambert! Yes, results to date under his management have been disappointing but he has utilized wonderfully well the resources at his disposal, and the end product has reinvigorated the whole of this football club.

Yesterday against Nottingham Forest, the Blues dominated possession again, and any neutral observing proceedings would surely have felt that the home side deserved to win it. This has been a common theme of late with Lambert sides. He chops and changes his squad a lot but the team that runs out onto the football field always gives their all, in a collective attempt to prove that their lowly position in the table is unjustified.

They say a league table does not lie and this is, of course, the case but what it fails to address is the reasons why? Town have suffered from so many injuries to key forward-thinking players that it is a wonder that we can find the net at all! Add to that some of the most diabolical refereeing decisions throughout the course of the season, and it goes some way to explaining our current plight at the foot of the football league table.

Lambert has got many of the players that Hurst recruited playing well, and I was always of the view that with time they would come good, and we are now seeing Jon Nolan,  Gwion Edwards, Aristote Nsiala and Kayden Jackson find their football feet in this division, and I am quite sure that Ellis Harrison will do too.

It was good to see Collin Quaner finally get onto the score sheet at the weekend and this should do him the world of good. Every striker needs a goal, and the sooner he starts finding the net the better for all concerned.

Referee Kieth Stroud was up to his old tricks in bizarrely disallowing what seemed like a perfectly good Jon Nolan goal, but in fairness to a ref that is controversy personified, he also cancelled out a Daryl Murphy strike in the first half too.

Ipswich Town: Bialkowski, Bree, Pennington, Chambers (captain), Kenlock, Skuse (Chalobah 42), Nolan, Bishop (Nsiala 90), Judge, Edwards, Quaner (Jackson 59). Unused substitutes: Gerken, Knudsen, Dozzell, El Mizouni.

Nottingham Forest: Pantilimon, Darikwa, Benalouane, Wague, Robinson, Yates (Carvalho 64), Pele (Ansarifard 77), Colback (c), Lolley, Murphy, Osborn (Cash 64). Unused substitutes: Steele, Guedioura, Watson, Milosevic.

Referee: Keith Stroud from Hamshire.

Attendance: Att: 16,709 (away support 1,691)