Town Need To Get Back Into The Winning Habit

It is nice to record the fact that we have gone eight games unbeaten. On paper it sounds impressive until we analyse the results and then the reading becomes a little less palatable.

Seven draws out of eight, means we are going further down the division and not up it and looking at the games we have left, there are none that are likely to be comfortable victories.

Town managing director Ian Milne says the club have to work much harder to encourage younger fans to watch live games, with the Blues focusing on youth with their new 2017/18 season ticket strategy.

The problem is that to get bums back on seats you need at least to play some entertaining football and with it hopefully, some winning results. Nothing else will do for the modern day Blue.

Under Mick McCarthy it is hard to imagine either of those things happening too often because he is always seeing football through the eyes of a defender.

Former Town and England captain Mick Mills does not see it this way and argues that once you go into management your mindset changes and you adapt more freely to the needs of your team.

Quite frankly, I have not seen this happening under the McCarthy regime and he is very ‘old school’ with regard to his football methodology in my opinion.

You can understand his thinking to a point as well, because it has brought him relative success, with limited budgets, at a number of clubs so far so why change a winning formula?

The trouble with Mick however is that when things start to go pear-shaped he does not like to change strategies. Admittedly, he has resorted to a 3-5-2 formation, which has coincided with our unbeaten run but that was forced on him through injuries mainly.

Tomorrow against Cardiff City, he will come up against an old friend and potential football foe in Neil Warnock. They go back to their playing day and there will be plenty of passion in those dug-outs on Saturday afternoon!

I am hoping Town can escape with all three points and they won’t probably get a better chance, as the Welsh club is beset with a long injury list and are in the habit of conceding late goals.

One thing is certain however and that is another draw is NOT a good result – no matter what kind of gloss our manager puts on it!

Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich