Bristol City....

Agreed Fieldmarshall, and Evans is the main problem with the club, as far as I'm concerned.

 

Not a lot of fun is it right now.

Whatever re Mick.

Whatever re Hurst.

We CANNOT however knock Lambert. Not his side.

 

Haha made me spit my drink on the floor this mate. Absolutely outrageous thing to say.

 

Of course you can. Nobody put a gun to his head, he had all the videos of our season to review if he'd wanted to, he's signed a lucrative contract and failed fairly spectacularly.

 

Well not really, we had a couple of games where we were woeful but we matched all the other sides, were the equal if not the better of Norwich on the day and look at them now.

 

We lost over half our games under Hurst. We were not a side that was difficult to beat.

 

Hull and Middlesbrough we were absolutely awful but generally we were a lot tighter, so I don't agree -

Last seven: P7 W0 D2 L5
Previous seven: P7 W1 D4 L2

 

Well if we're going to go down that route - we beat West Ham 5-1 one season under Jewell.

We beat Man Utd 3-2 in 94/95 when we went down.

Every given season you'll have a good performance or a good win.

That was a 1-1 draw you've pointed out, not even a win.

 

That might be a fair point but I felt we were fairly consistent in our performances and competed with whoever we played against, save for a couple of absolute horror shows.

The first thing Mick did when he came in was got us tight. You can't play expansive attacking football when you have inferior players or when you're on the back foot results wise, you'll get undone more often than not.

 

This 2018/19 Ipswich Town side are not a 'difficult team to beat'. We are bottom of the table with 11 points. We are a side that loses, and loses far too often. Now how much of that you want to attribute to Paul Lambert, someone who has come in and managed the last four games, and how much of that you want to attribute to Paul Hurst, the man who trained, assembled, and managed this squad for several months, with a full transfer window, is your prerogative. But to say that Paul Hurst made us difficult to beat is stretching. I would say Paul Hurst made us a difficult team to win, as his 6.7 win ratio sadly testifies. Like you Hampy, I wanted Hurst to succeed and stood by him a lot longer than most on here, but now that he's gone and no longer in charge, I have to hold my hands up and say I got it wrong on him. He was not the right fit for this club.

 

He may have been the right fit for this club if the owner had backed him, but we will never know because too many people sought immediate gratification and now we are no further forward from the mess that he inherited in the first place. What we can say with a high degree of probability is that sacking him hasn't helped our cause for this season and I can say with certainty is that I don't feel Lambert is the right fit for our club going forward because to him it's 'just another pay cheque'.

 

This season it's too late but I think I would like us to try a combination of Dyer / Burley / Butcher next.

 

The upshot is, we were sh!t under Hurst, and we're still sh!t under Lambert - and we're 97% getting relegated to the 3rd division.

 

Well you have a point there, Hampy. This team clearly required further investment in the playing side, especially after the amount of outgoings. Problem is, seeing how Hurst's current signings are working out, I wouldn't have faith in Hurst to be the man to identify the signings that we needed. It would have been interesting to see if we would have got that Curtis Tilt deal over the line, I know we got messed around but I feel he would have added some more defensive stability at the back.

I think we needed a Director of Football in place to help with the transition, regardless of who we appointed in the summer. That person would have provided Hurst with an experienced voice and ear around the ground. Hurst should have continued with his attempts to join the academy and first team, in terms of the style of football, because when he reverted to a more pragmatic, direct approach against Norwich and the matches afterwards, performances plummeted.

Hopefully if Hurst could do it all over again, he would have made more of an effort to keep the players on-side or relaxed aspects of his management style. From the comments since Lambert have taken over, not to mention the numerous rumours, it seems like Hurst lost the dressing room, and ultimately in this day and age, that comes down to poor man-management.

 

If you look at the games between Norwich and Swansea (and yes that is selective) then I think it stacks up. I don't think you can look at Leeds / QPR because everyone knew he was off and I think what has cost him his job was the poor start in August and that's a ridiculous reason to fire someone if the basis of the appointment is to change the club culture and build for the long term. That has been jettisoned.

 

On the contrary, I doubt Hurst gives a monkeys about this. It's a red herring.

 

I think the main reason he was fired was a combination of that poor start and the fact that he lost most, if not all of the dressing room. After the Exeter defeat, players didn't seem to want to play for him. They were not putting anywhere near the effort they have been putting in under Lambert. I don't know who was responsible for coaching the attack, but our forward play was consistently awful under Hurst, Swansea game excluded. The Bolton game was a perfect encapsulation of this, players just didn't know how to attack. They looked completely uncoordinated. That's poor management and of course poor on-pitch initiative (although they're looking more potent nowadays).

 

The results cost him his job.

His attitude behind the scenes / nastiness and way of speaking to the playing staff also sealed his fete.

We move on.

 

Hardly surprised - their getting changed, and he's acting like an absolute bellend week one - then you have a long coach journey back home to share.

Mick Bassett would be proud - it's the stuff of school boys.

 

Even though we scored twice against Birmingham, we were lucky in that first half - it changed half time against Middlesbrough. Freddie Sears was a threat in that second half and he hasn't looked back since.