Where There’s A Will There’s A Way They Say

Yesterday I began to question the commitment of some of our loanees but having read what Neil Warnock said about Emyr Huws and his willingness to take a pay cut to be with Town and play some first team football, it was like a breath of fresh air!

He may have only have played once for Manchester City before he was shipped out to other clubs but it seems that his attitude to playing the beautiful game is just that. Beautiful!

Few players in the modern era would contemplate playing for less just to get a game and yet this 23 year old Welsh international has done just that and it speaks volumes for his desire to play football.

It also speaks volumes for the way Marcus Evans is currently running the show and we can now clearly see why we did not get a quality striker in the transfer window.

If we are not prepared to be competitive when it comes to our salary structure with other Championship clubs, then it is unlikely we will find many like Huws, who appears to be the notable exception to the rule when it comes to earnings.

It is a refreshing change though and yet if we are prepared to splash out two million for a striker then surely we should be able to match it with a salary that meets with the going rate. What is the going rate however is far less discernible?

Rarely in the last few months have I felt genuine sympathy for hard-nosed manager Mick McCarthy but on this particular occasion I most certainly do.

Our owner does not do interviews and is almost as mysterious as Howard Hughes and yet McCarthy has to play the role of a carpenter without the right tools.

How can he mould Ipswich into a team that can clearly challenge for a Premier League slot when our owner is so reluctant to supply him with any financial clout?

Now we all know that Evans has taken on the massive debt the club incurred before he bought it and of course he was prepared to spend freely in the days of Keane and Jewell – in the rather naive expectation of immediate success but going from one extreme to the other is surely not the answer. McCarthy in my view, deserves a fair crack of the whip.

So tomorrow Ipswich take on Reading at Portman Road and I am not going to make a prediction. I just hope that some of the new recruits can make an impact and that Tom Lawrence passes a late fitness test on his sprained ankle. The rest as they say is down to the football Gods…

Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich