Ipswich Town certainly have a drawing mentality these days. That is seven out of our last eight games that have ended this way – although yesterday at Oakwell we were rather lucky to come home with anything.
Brett Pitman finally got some game time – all of four minutes of it but that was enough for him to send in a precision cross that was met by Tom Lawrence at the far post, who steered the ball home from a tight angle to the delight of the away following!
In truth, Town hardly deserved anything from this one, as manager Mick McCarthy admitted later. ‘ It`s first thing I`ve stolen from here. I was here a long time and I never took a paper clip, a pen, a piece of paper or anything else, but we`ve burgled a point today.’
The goal, when it finally came for Town, was virtually the last kick of the match but although this unbeaten run, that goes back to the end of January when we were thumped 3-0 at home by Derby is encouraging, it is nevertheless not helping us much.
We are stuck in 16th place in the Championship table but with the gap between us and the relegation zone narrowing from nine to seven points yesterday. Wolverhampton Wanderers, Burton Albion and Bristol City all won yesterday and that is something we need to do rather quickly ourselves I feel.
Our next match is away to Cardiff City next Saturday and like us, the Welsh club have nothing much to play for except pride and currently have three points more than us in the table.
The strategy of our manager, when he suggests that there is no such thing as a bad point, was all very well when he went into management and even earlier, when he was a player, because in those days, you got two points for a win and one point for a draw.
If this was still the case then we would be in and around those play-off places and not looking over our shoulder at a potential relegation dog-fight.
But football has moved on and it is only our manager who seemingly hasn’t and his complacent approach to our current predicament, is thwart with danger in my view.
In fairness to Mick McCarthy, the three substitutions he made yesterday were all attack-minded players but as is so often the case, he only made most of them when we were losing – which tells us all we really need to know about Mick’s drawing mentality!
Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich
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