Tomorrow at Portman Road Ipswich take on high flying Charlton Athletic to complete the home trilogy. A win and we are once again back on track! That would give us six points out of a possible nine at home, and the likelihood of finding us back in the automatic promotion mix. Former Blue Mick Mills said that before these three home game that 5 points would have been a satisfactory outcome so obviously if we win, we would surpass this target!
Those doom and gloom merchants are back out in force at the moment, and resentment does not belong exclusively to the Blue Action group. Many regular readers feel much the same way, and they have even greater cause to vent their frustrations, as some of them have supported the Blues for more than half a century!
I beg to differ. I too have supported Ipswich Town football club for more than fifty years, and yet my glass is still half full. What we all seem to forget is a series of deplorable refereeing decisions that have been compounded by our injury plight, and this has gone a long way to derailing our season. It is only six weeks ago that we were beating Blackpool 1-4 away from home and until Shrewsbury last Saturday, we had won our previous six home games without even conceding a goal! That game we won too of course – thanks to a remarkable fightback, crescendoed by that late Jack Lankester header that got us all three points!
Now I am not trying to suggest that everything is perfect because it clearly isn’t. Manager Paul Lambert has been dealt a poor hand and has been forced to play square pegs in round holes. Under normal circumstances Alan Judge would be dropped and so too would Freddie Sears. But these are not normal circumstances. The Town squad is decimated. Sears is now out of action too. It is perhaps just as well, given his more recent form. He is sadly a pale shadow of his former self.
What I want to see most of all tomorrow is a common commitment to the cause. We need that fighting spirit to reinvigorate us. Nothing less will do. Andre Dozzell is back so at least there is some good news. The Addicts will be hurting from their shock 4-2 midweek defeat to lowly Burton Albion, who were bottom of the table before that encounter!
In other words, we are not the only club suffering at the moment. Their manager Lee Bowyer used to play for us at the back end of his career, and he has not forgotten that he tried and failed to purchase James Norwood but was outbid by the Blues.
Manager Paul Lambert will struggle to reshuffle tomorrow, and this will mean that the players who failed so completely against Hull City on Tuesday night, will get another chance to redeem themselves. Let us hope they do.
