When Will Town Stop Letting Us Down?

East Anglian Daily Times football columnist Stuart Watson hit the nail on its head when he said that the finger of blame for the debacle that occurred on Saturday night at Portman Road was a collective catastrophe and players must take responsibility too.

Their performance against a Nottingham Forest side that had not kept a clean sheet all season was quite frankly diabolical.

It is fair play to blame the manager for some of it but as Watson intimated, he cannot legislate for the woeful defending that occurred as early as the first 20 seconds! Once the players go out onto that pitch the talking stops and the action begins but in the case of Ipswich Town, it was inaction that lead to the first goal.

Jonas Knudsen was the first culprit when he headed the ball in the general direction of Christophe Berra who instead of controlling it let the ball run into space and that space was occupied by Ben Osborn who played in Assombalonga and he finished clinically with an angled drive that keeper Bartosz Bialkowski may have felt he should have got a hand to. This was a collective shambles of the lowest order!

The second goal was a result of another appalling bit of defending but midfielder Jonny Williams believes that it was the poor start that was the catalyst for a horrendous night for Town supporters.

‘A mistake so early, which was easily avoided on another day and then to concede just before half-time made it a different game,’ he explained to Ipswich Player afterwards.

But let’s face it. That is not a good enough excuse for what we saw. Town lacked drive and passion and almost accepted their lot even before there was a minute on the clock.

The whole team performance was totally unacceptable and although I am not one to boo my own players, on this occasion it was probably much more justifiable.

The finger of blame must also be directed towards to Mick McCarthy for his tactics and not having an effective plan B when we were chasing the game, which of course we were throughout!

Next up is Queens Park Rangers and it will be interesting to see what our manager proposes to do to ensure we never play so badly again, as we try to get some points on the board.

Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich