Town Have The Firepower To Win The Derby

The East Anglian Daily Times football columnist Stuart Watson agrees with me, when he suggests that Ipswich Town can overcome their fiercest rivals Norwich City with a win at Portman Road on Sunday afternoon.

And here are the reasons why. Firstly, the performance against second placed Sheffield United on Saturday was not bad and it was the first time this season that we have failed to score in the Championship – otherwise we would have got something.

This season our greatest strength has been our attack and we have the firepower up front to seriously hurt The Canaries in my view.

Unlike previous season’s we are scoring goals from midfield too but with a strike force of Joe Garner, Martyn Waghorn, David McGoldrick and Bersant Celina, there won’t be many days when we shoot blanks.

I also feel that our rivals are not as good as their current league position suggests. They struggled in the early part of the season but have now gone on an eight match unbeaten run but that was only thanks to a last gasp equalizer against Hull City last Saturday at Carrow Road, and yet the visitors had a player dismissed and played with ten men for most of the second half.

Ipswich have a superior goal difference too at plus three, whilst Norwich find themselves on minus two. Their victories have been generally narrow ones and they even lost 4-0 to Millwall, where of course we were victorious!

These derby games are notoriously hard to predict but the Blues have home advantage and I suspect a few of The Canaries German imports will not know quite what has hit them!

And if the squad ever needed an incentive to do the business then it will be thanks City’s Portuguese striker Nelson Oliveira who said boastfully, ‘We are better than them. We have better players than them. We are a better club than them so we go there to win.’

Former Town favourite Ray Crawford came back fighting today when he said,’ Norwich will never, ever, be a bigger club than Ipswich Town. Come on, we won the First Division in the biggest underdog success story in English football history. We won the FA Cup, conquered Europe and produced international stars.’

Which begs the question, what have Norwich actually won? The 81 year old former striker continued, ‘We are known worldwide because of the achievements of Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson, who went on to have such success with England. Norwich are best known for Delia Smith shouting ‘let`s be having you!’ A few recent years in the top league doesn`t change all of that.’



Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich