When the chairman of a struggling club peruses the fixture list and sees Town coming up they invariably ditch their manager. Why is it always us?
It is like a re-occurring dream or more to the point, a re-occurring nightmare!
We take the lead and cannot hold onto it no matter how we try. In fact, what we usually try to do is the precise opposite of what we need to do, if we are serious about killing games off!
As I have said on many occasions before, Mick McCarthy is doing a fantastic job and has pulled us up from a sheer drop by our bootlaces.
He is a knowledgeable man and has the wherewithal to command respect at all levels of football both for his honesty and his pragmatism.
Of course nobody is perfect and the closer we analyze the man, the more we begin to see his fault lines. By nature he is very cautious but this is offset to some extent by positive manner in which Terry Connor goes about his work.
In some ways they are chalk and cheese. One was a solid no nonsense defender and the other a very gifted striker, who always knew where the goal was.
Connor appears to have persuaded McCarthy to play more positively these days, often employing the 4-4-3 system to good effect. This increases our attacking options, which is perhaps why we are scoring so many early goals.
The downside is that when we have a lead it seems to be Mick who takes over and replaces attack minded players with defence orientated ones.
That said against Huddersfield he initially introduced Tabb and Anderson but probably told them not be too adventurous, as we had a two goal lead at the time.
We all know what happened. Once again, the blues were pegged back and in the end did rather well to get a point from a game they had every right to win!
This has sadly become a re-occurring theme and if only we could have the belief to attack and go for the jugular a bit more when we have been in the ascendancy, then I feel sure more of these games would end in victory for the Town.
Blackpool on Saturday away and a match that we had high hopes of winning but as usual, our opponents fire their manager when they see Ipswich coming up!
Confucius once said that there is no such a thing as a coincidence because there is a purpose to everything.
Let us hope then that the blues play with a purpose and get the three points we so badly need!
