Town Deserved More Than A Draw

In truth the blues only had 11 shots in the whole ninety minutes and only two of them were on target but overall it was a good Town display and if it had not been for a very poor decision from the officials Ipswich Town would have come away with all three points.

After Christophe Berra had sent over a delightful cross it was Daryl Murphy who climbed the highest and directed his header into an unprotected net, only for it to be harshly ruled out as the goal celebrations began.

Manager Mick McCarthy was fuming afterwards and told the press that although he was truly delighted with the performance and in particular his defence he felt that the blues were robbed of all three by a terrible refereeing decision.

‘I have looked at it and Freddie is in front of the goalkeeper and it flies past him – and I’m not even convinced that he is in an offside position. I think there is a defender who is level with him and even if he is not, I saw a goal recently when a player shot and someone was in front of the goalkeeper, and it was a goal! They are the rules now, unless you motion towards it.’

Well I suppose over the course of the season luck has a habit of evening itself out but only getting a draw when a win looked on the cards means that Town stay in the bottom half of the table.

We cannot forget to give our Polish keeper a special mention because Bartosz Bialkowski once again kept us in the game when newboy Adam Webster gave away a needless penalty and Bart dived the right way to deny German Striker Jon Dadi Bodvarsson.

Now we face Norwich on Sunday afternoon in a game that is featured on Sky Sports 2 and beamed all over the world. Let us hope with our rather depleted squad we can compete against one of the favourites to go up again – although personally I am not convinced.

I have heard on the grapevine that Scouser Conor Grant has a 50% chance of making it into the team, if he training ground groin strain heals in time and that Brett Pitman should make the bench.

If we were to defeat The Canaries then it might help us to kick start our season and with a big crowd anticipated at Portman Road there is nothing like beating your arch-rivals when it comes to motivation!

Frank Weston – editor of Vital Ipswich