Another poor result. We did try and pass the ball more today but a lot of passes were over hit and forced as the players still looked short of confidence. The players that didn't look affected were naturally the ones that haven't played much. Downes was good, Lankester was positive when he came on. I am not a big fan of 'keepers that punch the ball out. If you're close enough to punch why not try and catch? So many goals are scored from a ball that has been punched out that I don't see the sense in it. Man of the Match - Downes Donkey of the Match - shared between Ward and Knudsen
Ward did some good work at times. Chalobah looked decent. Dozzell was the stand out player for me. The weakest links were Skuse, Jackson and Sears, consistently giving the ball away. There were times in the second half, particularly at the very end when we moved the ball faster and it started to look like something could happen. These players need drilling in training to sharpen up and we can afford no weak links in the midfield. I’d drop Skuse and Ward and replace with Edwards and Chalobah, bringing Nsiala and Donacien back into the defence.
Feel the formation was probably wrong for this match. I’ve said it before, but Knudsen and Ward are not full backs and they struggled again playing that position. Arguably should have kept it simpler with a 4-4-2 or a 4-4-3. Sears and Jackson were poor again, didn’t think much of Chambers at the back. Pennington is clearly our best defender right now and should be played at centre back, which is his strongest position. So hopefully Lambert won’t move him to the full back positions to accommodate our underperforming captain and Nsiala, who looks out of depth in this division. If only Woolfenden had a recall option.
Going back to ME,listened to an article on BBC 909 on Friday night, can't remember who it was, but they were talking about Frank Lampard, and apparently the reason why he never came to Ipswich, was because he wanted to bring Mason Mount to town but ME refused to pay the full percentage of his wages. If that's true, and the presenter seemed to think it was common knowledge, then that is one huge cock up from ME (another one)
