'How you have you been Ipswich Town fans? Have you had a good fortnight's respite?' the Premier League asks nicely, a smile never quite reaching its eyes. 'Welcome back to the slaughterhouse. Are you looking forward to more heart-wrenching, sometimes gallant defeats? No, no - you can keep your shoes on please.' The earlier fixture against Bournemouth came off the back of two consecutive defeats. We had been winning and playing well, but we were sunk by goals in the 87th and 95th minutes. That was back in the first half of the season, where we could reliably scrap for points but just as reliably throw away leads. Back when - after a couple of wins against Wolves and Chelsea - there were encouraging signs we could climb up the table. Then the second half of the season struck and it has been a much more brutal experience. Only a couple of points from the last ten games. Lots of factors and reasoning on this forum, but a possibly overlooked contributor is players are mentally and physically exhausted. The grind and psychological drain of continuously coming close to winning games, but never getting there consistently enough, has sunk better teams than us in this division. Bournemouth - fresh from exiting the FA Cup against Man City - may be the more tired of the two teams coming into this game. But it'd take a brave man to bet on us winning our first league game since the end of December. I'm going to be optimistic again and hope the prolonged time off for most of this players has freshened them up and got them hungry for the fight. A 1-1 draw.
Slightly different subject but I got 3 tickets for Newcastle 10 minutes ago so they are still available, looks like we are losing a few of the glory hunters.
I am sure you are right Nuggets, its one helluva long grind and must be demoralising however good the team's resiliance and club spirit may be. I will go for a surprising draw too. 2-2
Bottom of the Current Form Table 18) Bournemouth 4 19) Southampton 3 19) Ipswich 1 20) Leicester 0 I think this is one you can win, it depends if you are rusty for the first 45 minutes after the International break or come out all guns blazing, Bournemouth's season is done, they're not making Europe and not getting relegated. They'll believe they can make Europe and might look at this as an easy game and under estimate you I am going for Bournemouth 1 Ipswich 2 I want you to win as you've some decent supporters on here and if you do go down I hope you get some excitement with a fight and not a roll over, everyone deserves a bit of cheer and if you win it will make the Wolves game an almighty nail biter
I was hoping for extra time and penalties with Bournemouth going through 30 29 . Never mind. KM will have seen the light ( hopefully not the premier league train running us down) 3-2 win.
I remember the Bournemouth at home fixture, followed the example of many of our performances. Went 1-0 up through Chaplin, Burgess then had a goal ruled out for still no idea what to make it 2-0. He had one of if not the best CB performances I've ever seen but we conceded 2 late goals to lose the game due to the relentlessness of the game and in reality the subs they could bring on. Like you say that kind of performance/result has to have a mental impact eventually. Also after that outstanding performance by Burgess he was dropped a couple of games later and not been seen regularly in the team since. I feel that game pretty much sums up our season.
Like I said, they’ll believe they can but the cup was their best chance, they’re not gaining 4 points and those above all failing.
Maybe the break will have done us some good, attack the game with a nothing to lose attitude and who knows. Forever an optimist I'll say 1-0.
Well, Broadie scores, I am on a ship sailing to France, so dodgy wifi. Lets go on and win this, put pressure on Wolves.
