We’ve not been that bad for a while, that was arguably the worst we’ve played all season. I disagree that we look complacent, arrogant, or bad this season. Before last night, we hadn’t lost a game since late February. The performance and commitment levels have always been high under a McKenna Ipswich side, with the exception of the second half of the Premier League season. Yes, we have a habit of grinding out wins, but I’ve rarely seen us outplayed this season. Last night just felt like the players were coming down from the high of beating Norwich and hopefully it was just a bad day at the office. But no bones about it, it was a disappointing result and we’re making things much harder for ourselves. Credit to Pompey though - had a gameplan and they are fighting for survival.
This Ipswich team is often defined by who scores first. Most of the time, it’s been us that gets the first goal. That allows us to sit back a bit and control the game. Most worrying for me is when the opposition score first, we often struggle and heads can drop. That’s best demonstrated by the fact we’ve only won once this season when we’ve gone behind.
Another trend is that we often step it up against the better teams in this division. We’ve beaten league leaders, Coventry twice. When was the last time we did that? We did the double over Norwich - for the first time in three decades. But away from home against poorer sides on paper - there’s an issue. Defeats to teams like Portsmouth, Oxford, and Leicester (despite their strength “on paper”) is a cause for concern considering upcoming trips to Charlton and West Brom. At this point, I’m more confident about beating Middlesbrough at Portman Road on Sunday than the mid-week trip to Charlton next Wednesday!
And if we do go up, what’s the state of play? Are going to need to do another transfer splurge? Do we trust Ashton and the team to do this successfully considering the mixed recent record. Can we confidently claim that the goalkeepers, Furlong, Greaves, Kipre, Neil, Taylor, and pretty much all our attacking players are truly Premier League ready?
I generally look to avoid comparing this team to the last promotion side - because it ignores the momentum, much more vocal support, and surprise factor we had on every other team that year - but really the only three things we do better now is defending, control possession, and handle higher expectations. In terms of pretty much everything else - points total, mentality, system, and goals scored - we’re way off it.
Put aside claims of entitlement and jinxing things, but for me - the true test of this team isn’t how we get promoted, it’s whether we then do better and survive in the Premier League next season. If we don’t make it, then it’s been a failure of a season and questions need to be asked of everyone at the club. We’ve got to keep the faith though and trust in this team and McKenna to live up to expectations and get us over the line.
