We can now say that the season is effectively over. Five wins from the last five games, and this includes two encounters against automatic promotion candidates Wigan Atheltic and Rotherham United, and we can wave our lingering promotion hopes goodbye. And, even if we were to win them all, we would still only have a 39% chance of reaching the top six! Let’s get used to it. We are staying in League One.
That sorry Cambridge United defeat, in front of a bumper crowd of 26,515 at Portman Road, put paid to any remaining feeble aspirations. The fires of hope were extinguished rapidly by that miserable defeat, and so another season awaits us here. Who was to blame? Nobody in particular. Former boss Paul Cook has his many critics, but he knew that the only way that Ipswich could be born again, was to rid it of all the deadwood. Cole Skuse, Luke Chambers, Emyr Huws, Freddie Sears. Alan Judge and Myles Kenlock were shipped off to Colchester, and the remainder moved elsewhere. He replaced them with some players of real quality. Wes Burns, Conor Chaplin, George Edmunson, Cameron Burgess, Lee Evans, Sam Morsy, Kyle Edwards, Sone Aluko, Macauley Bonne Bersant Celina and Christian Walton (loans), all joined the ranks, and contrary to what some critics suggest, more than 50% of those signings were good! Had it not been for long term injuries, most of them would still be automatic choices.
But when you replace 27 squad members with 19 new ones, you cannot expect things to gel quickly. This was the risk Cook took, and because we started so slowly, it would eventually cost him his job. He believed that he would have got things right in the end, but time waits for no man, and in football even less! If there was a cause and effect, then it was Leam Richardson deciding to not follow him to Portman Road, like a dog on a lead. His success at Wigan seems to prove that Richardson made the right choice. And without his chief lieutenant, Cook was like a boat without an engine, and he began to drift endlessly – unable to stop the deep waves of disappointments, as more points were dropped, and because his backroom staff were quite simply not up to the task of rescuing his career. I quite liked Paul Cook, but he was all mouth and not enough good planning, and completely devoid tactically of a plan B.
In came Kieran McKenna, but he was already left with a mountain to climb, and although he notched up four wins from his first six games, dropping points became a bad habit. One point is almost as bad as a defeat in the modern game, and you are better off winning six and losing three than winning three and drawing six. You might still be unbeaten, but it tells you nothing – except that you are hard to beat. Only leaders Wigan have lost as little as six matches this season, and Plymouth, in fourth, have already lost ten. That is how many matches the Blues had lost before that Cambridge defeat, but the difference is that The Pilgrims have drawn but eight. Conversely, Ipswich has drawn thirteen and seven under Cook’s watch. Under McKenna, it’s five from eighteen. I think our new boss will fine-tune things in the summer, and I have every confidence that he will get things right in the end. We have to believe he will succeed quickly, for his sake and ours. The next transfer window is his chance to reshape our squad. The changes will be subtle because his squad believes!
