Very very disheartening result. I get the impression that we forget we're not winning and trying to put together impressive looking moves that don't actually threaten the goal. Then get shocked when the opposition score. Need to inject some more urgency. Running out of time now.
Genuine question - What would be different if you go up a season later. Did your promotion winning team contain several 19-21 year olds who would have improved further. You bought a load of top Championship talent, you spent a record for a promoted team, I can’t see what would be different if you’d went up a season later. To be honest, if you’d failed last season you would be behind the top 4 in the championship this season. Your coach gambled and spent big under estimating the jump in quality, a season later would have made zero difference. Early on this season you lost out with the draws that could have been wins, your coach started ripping out the heart of the team that got you to the PL and with his scattergun approach in the transfer market he has been found out.
Answered your own question a bit there, on paper last season our squad was at best mid-championship class. It was in large parts togetherness and team spirit that made us a lot more than the sum of our parts. A season later would have meabt more time to build a squad and less need to spend to fill holes everywhere. Which has very much disrupted our rhythm.
Sometimes everything just falls into place for a particular season and you have to grab it, Ipswich did just that. I really don’t see how another season would have made any difference, the talent you purchased have shown, that in general, they’re not good enough for the PL and I honestly feel your coach has been caught out big time.
Lots of valid points on here. As some of us have mentioned McKenna is making so many changes to the team every game, with a run of injuries and trying to bed in new players when actually often it is a change of approach & formation that is needed. Maybe he is showing his inexperience. Our midfield used to be our creative engine room, full of energy, aggression and control. While Cajuste on his day is a fine player, Morsy has struggled recently and is prob too slow for the Prem. Taylor showed promise but is not Prem level. Phillips we have yet see what he can do. With Walton out for a few weeks and Muric looking shot and lost confidence, we have a big keeper issue. The 2nd goal just went low thru his legs. I am also worried by the lack of that special team spirit and togetherness which has buoyed us last 2 years. Losing poorly is depressing for players. So while the gaffer is less optimistic now we must keep up our support and not throw our toys out the pram. I think we can mentally prepare ourselves for a return to the Championship. No disgrace, and if we do keep most players, we will compete well again. I dont buy into the idea we came up too soon. Our club has learnt massively from this season, and it aint over yet. Moreover I cherish the thought of seeing us winning a football game!
For what it is worth, I don’t believe you are dead and buried yet, Wolves are still very poor and it’s the moral that cost you yesterday, I’m sure if that game was played a month ago you’d have won Leicester would be my concern for you, they are away to Wolves and home to both Ipswich and Southampton Only having two games in March might benefit you if you can close the gap on Wolves by at least a point, that goal difference is what might ruin your season Anyway, good luck for the remainder of the season, most of your fans are pretty decent
Unlucky yesterday chaps. Thought you were comfortably the better side and we by no means deserved anything but I'll certainly take it after the season we've had! Was also nice to get a late winner having been at Portman Road last season plus the equaliser at St Marys in September. Have been rooting for you lot to stay up but when you lack quality compared to most of the division you really can't afford to not be beating us at home. With the signings you've made though I think you'll be in a good position to mount an autos challenge again next season. Good luck for the rest of the season. Spoke to a lot of your fans yesterday and were all sound before the match and very gracious afterwards.
I think K Mc is showing his inexperience somewhat. Watched the first half of the wolves game yesterday, amd it highlighted to me that we have no fight in our team. Wolves we're battling for everything, crunching tackles, chasing and harassing everything. Us? We think we can just play our nice pretty football and it will work. Might do on L1 and the championship, but not when you're playing against seasoned premiership players. We only have a plan A, and this is what bugs me with the team/McKenna. I appreciate he's still a novice and is learning on the job, but for Christ sake mix it up a bit. We're sooooo predictable. In saying all.that, the team are performing better than I expected, and am proud of the journey that we are all on, and enjoying our football again based on the last 20 years or so. I won't be giving up just yet, but it's going to be a monumentous effort to keep us up. Looks like it's going to be 3 up 3 down again
I think McKenna is an outstanding manager, he's clearly a world class coach and his man management is superb but I've always felt his biggest weakness is in game tactics. Last season we signed/had players who could come in to our formation and mix it up and were tenacious providing the energy we needed to get over the line. This season this league is relentless even against teams like Southampton, who coincidentally I thought looked worse than last season and we looked better. But even though they didn't look great they still have some players who can produce real quality moments. Everyone warned us what this division was like, that it just sucks the life out of you and you can see it. Saying all this we're not out of it yet, I feel under McKenna we often have real body blows this time of year. I just hope with the number of new players we have we're able to show that same resilience we have the past few years to overcome it. Let's be honest despite the investment anything above 20th spot for us is unlikely. We've seen when we've recruited this many players before it's taken time to bed in and even under McKenna it wasn't until he'd been in the role for a year until we saw things clicking. I have felt McKenna has ditched the band of brothers a bit too quickly this season and dropped players for no particular reason when some had shown good form but by the same token I don't know how much difference this would have made, we've had lots of injuries, we've brought in loads of new players yet we still feel light in certain areas. We needed to strengthen the team, some transfer will be hit and miss and despite spending a lot of money we're still playing catch up because every single one of these teams has had at least 2 more seasons than us with this kind of financial fire power. It was always going to be a struggle and if the last few seasons are to go by we rarely seem to beat our closest rivals yet we've come out on top, so yesterday was a big blow but it's only 1 game so there's still hope yet.
I’m sure the football is more enjoyable when you’re not doing hundreds of miles of round trips after disappointing performances and results every week. There have been enjoyable days, but too many wrenching ones like yesterday. I don’t think we’re losing games on the training ground or pitch. The bubble was burst by McKenna courting other clubs in the summer, a ridiculous decision to effectively swap Hladky for Muric and pay Burnley £10m for the privilege. Then a raft of cripplingly expensive signings, most of whom haven’t improved us as a team. I don’t see a lack of effort but I do see a lack of chemistry and fight. The lack of fight is an unhappy effect of McKenna’s measured approach. I think the belief and faith in McKenna is dwindling and so the only way we are going to survive is if he throws the book out and tries some other things - two up front, Slicker or signing a new goalkeeper, promoting players from the youth side, dropping Morsy, playing Woolfy and Burgess together, naming an unchanged XI, making subs earlier. We can’t put right all the mistakes that have happened but we can stop making them.
Clearly a world class manager? World class managers have won multiple domestic, continental and national honours. Arne Slot is not even there yet.
A dreadful result and a performance that lacked any kind of real fluency. As others have stated, I think the constant changes/rotations (admittedly some of it because of injuries) doesn’t help us. We don’t have a joined up approach to playing - unlike last season where we had a more settled side (again, injuries weren’t as big a factor last year and the opposition was obviously weaker). Yesterday, I thought the two centre backs were mostly solid, Cajuste had a good game, Enciso looked threatening (but needs more power on his shots) and both Delap and Broadhead had good spells. Unfortunately, we had a lot of weak points. Muric demonstrated again why he was initially dropped. A decent save for the second goal, but needed to push it out for a corner not back in play. His positioning looked dodgy too. Davis had a poor game - I think he really struggles defensively at this level and his attacking output is nowhere near to his standard last season. Morsy arguably needs dropping. Another disappointing showing. Substitutes again unable to influence the match and provide that spark we could consistently rely on before. Injuries have decimated this squad. It was always going to be a challenge to stay up, but that makes the job harder. Despite the transfer activity, we’ve got the weakest squad depth in the league. Confidence appears shot. I’d be amazed if we stay up.
I'm glad you looked up the Oxford dictionary definition of a world class manager. I also intentionally said coach, Nicky Butt recently said he's one of the best coaches he's ever seen on the grass and assuming in his career he's seen some pretty good ones who've been part of teams who've won multiple things.
I see the nuance. Thanks for correcting. But still, as far as I know he has a single U18s title to show for all of his coaching and managerial career so far.
Agreed. McKenna is not the issue here. I think the perception of him from the wider football media is a little overrated - it’s his first season managing in the Premier League and this will be only his third full year. He’s clearly a great coach and he’s managed to get top performances from players who previously never hit those heights (last season being the main case in point). He’s getting good performances from players like Delap this season, on track for double figure goals in his debut PL season with a newly promoted side. Delap never really looked like a top striker at Hull.
Let's not forget this time last season we'd just lost to Maidstone in the cup and then lost to Preston and I think we slipped down to 4th in the table. Things didn't seem to Rosey then and they turned out okay in the end. It's gonna be an uphill struggle but all is not lost.
The last two years under McKenna we’ve had a downturn of form around January/February. But we’ve managed to pick ourselves up to hit form over the last few months of the season. Unfortunately, I can’t see us replicating it in the Premier League. We leak goals - not helped by a pair of goalkeepers that don’t look or play to a Premier League standard. We consistently fail to control and dictate games from midfield. We’re not playing with confidence. And aside from Delap, we don’t have an attacking player that regularly provides goals or assists. Take yesterday - Hutchinson and Enciso constantly failed to play a pass, preferring to keep possession and lose the ball. Broadhead doesn’t have the composure in the final third. Philogene couldn’t even get the basics right. Hirst doesn’t look effective enough at this level. Even Delap seems to prefer throwing himself down in the box in a bid to get penalties, rather than play a pass or take a shot. The hallmarks of a McKenna Ipswich side - rapid counterattacks and quick interchange passes - is never quite pulled off against Premier League defences. The team spirit seems okay, but it looks like some players don’t have faith in those around them. If we’re realistically going to stay up, we have to be beating Southampton at home. With Wolves’ superior goal difference, we’re two wins away from overtaking them in the table. That’s before any upturn in form Leicester might engineer (although unlikely). Maybe we can beat Spurs again, but we’ve only won one home league game this season. Manchester United away isn’t the daunting fixture it used to be. But is anyone seriously backing us to win those games? Again - no knock on the team. Context is key, we were always going to struggle this season and staying up would be a massive achievement. We’ve competed well enough in most games and probably deserve to have several more points on the board than we do. But our goalkeepers can’t save shots, we don’t defend well enough, we don’t create enough chances, and we don’t have the squad depth that almost every other PL side has.
I heard McKenna trot out the line about our January form in previous seasons but he’s clutching at straws. The difference this season is we’ve had awful form in the first half of the season so there’s no form to recover. I don’t agree with the criticism of Hirst, Hutch or Enciso. If it’s not for the goalkeeper we’ve won that game and many more points besides.
Hirst has had one good half this season. I take the point he’s been injured, so has missed a load of games. But he’s played in 12 games this season, has one goal, and fails to make an impact from the bench. He needs to step up. Hutchinson had another poor game and I think he’s off-form. Tries too hard to do things himself, at the cost of making sensible passes. I thought Enciso had a decent game, but still tried to do too much and missed presentable passes. He had a few shots on target but they all lacked power. He needs to be making the keeper work more as the shots were all around the edge of the area. I take the point about Muric costing us points. I think that second goal would’ve still happened with Walton - a goalkeeper that cannot get down fast enough to save low shots. If we’re able to bring in another goalkeeper, we should do so. Regardless of whatever division we’re playing in next season, Muric should be moved on. Recruitment wise, we’ve got a lot right since the new owners have come in. Muric is a glaring weak point - possibly the worst bit of business we’ve done (pound for pound) in the last decade. I can’t see why people at the club thought he was worth £10 million.
It’s been very rare that any of our subs have had an impact this season, because they don’t get long enough on the pitch. Hirst has never scored buckets of goals himself, he creates chances for others whereas Delap is generally wasteful.
