That was absolutely abysmal. Let’s not pretend Downes and Dozzell are footballers - pulling down players because we can’t compete on footballing terms and we should’ve finished the match with a maximum of 9 men. The ref has done us a massive favour tonight.
What else is there to say? Another limp defeat to a club challenging for promotion. A continuous issue throughout our time in League One. This is a team lacking drive, purpose, and direction. We seemed resigned to lose matches against half decent opposition. A few changes on a team that actually performed well and was set up well against Blackpool. A reversion to aimless long balls forwards. There are many things I’d like to change at Ipswich, but one of the achievable short-term changes would be to start Matheson and Kenlock at full backs, because Chambers and Ward just do not have the quality or fitness to play the full back role in the modern game.
A poor night indeed. Dear me, where do we go from here? All very dispiriting, as if we havnt enough to contend with in our lives. The heart & soul of a club we once loved, followed with passion, cheered to the rafters, strode into the once famous stadium with mounting excitement & expectation ...reduced to this. After 61 years a fan, I ask myself, do I really need these false hopes every match day?
Got it in one Gaffer, Evans has reduced us to this and you would think that he would be doing everything possible to get us up and out of this lousy division but instead the depressing spiral continues and seemingly encouraged by the lack of positive intervention by our useless owner, it's shameful just bloody shameful.
I think it feels even worse after the good performance at the weekend. It shows either the players are capable but run hot and cold because the management is completely inept, or that we can only perform against the weaker sides because the management is completely inept.
Lambert didn’t even have the bottle to come out and speak to the press. He mentions time and again about how he played for big clubs in big games but facing the media after a loss to Peterborough after he changes a winning team, no thanks. Over to you Stewart - another delusional yes man who thinks we deserved a draw
Sounds like they were trying to be too clever tonight with the line up. Losing to Peterborough away is no big shame in this league and given our injury problems I can accept a defeat. That is starting to wear a little bit thinner now as players return to fitness and with the addition of loan players. Its just very disappointing he changed a winning team in addition to naming a unbalanced one. If youre going to play a diamond in midfield you need full backs to are able to get up and down the pitch. And despite all of Chambers experience, he doesn't even make us more solid at RB, I think the past few seasons he's actually been a liability in whatever position he has played. Add to that you're asking alot of 2 very inexperienced CBs. If you're going to play 2 up top match Peterborough, I would have gone 532. This highlights also to me how much of a loss a fully fit Norwood is for us. Getting him fit and playing regularly will be a big bonus for us. I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt but patience is starting to wear thin with players starting to come back from injury and the new loans coming in.
Heartily disagree with you there. There is great shame in Peterborough United being in every way our superior, in setting up purely to try to counter them. Accepting of our position, accepting defeat at this level. I’m hearing this more and more from Town fans. It’s shameful indeed.
The biggest difference between us and any half decent side at the moment is the quality of passing.Time after time tonight our "passes" were finding players in blue shirts......oh wait,we were in maroon! We continually play like a bunch of strangers scared to give or receive the ball with any conviction or confidence.It really does hark back to the worst of the MM days when the default ball was a hoof up field in the vain hope of getting the ball as far away from our danger area as possible with no thought that it's being given straight back to the opposition.
The key point in all this is that our record against the top seven is played nine and lost nine. It was equally poor last season. We shouldn’t settle for that.
Agreed, I think we're all in agreement that the club needs to be more ambitious. We deserve to be where we are today through years of lack of ambition
Had we set up the same way as the weekend and tried to play it on the deck rather than hoofball we would have made a better fist of it. Putting Chambers back in at right back was ridiculous and playing a large portion of the game with an isolated forward chasing long balls was ridiculous. That the isolated forward is a teenage loanee who hasn’t scored a solitary senior goal is beyond ridiculous. In particular, the performances of Downes and Dozzell who are talked up as talents were ridiculous for so-called professional footballers. That the manager was too embarrassed to talk to the press says he knows the whole evening was ridiculous. There was and is nothing inevitable about our situation. There really wasn’t a single positive to take out of the game and nobody in the Town camp came out of it with any credit.
I agree Yorkie, it puzzled me when I saw the lineup. If he had tweaked the team all season but there was some consistency to it, I might have understood it a bit more. The pitch was awful so he wanted to go more direct playing 2 up top and have some experience at the back the problem is he's spent all season rigidly sticking to 433 even when it's obvious he needs to change it and then the first time it looks half decent in a while and he changes it. Its the inconsistency in tactics which is really concerning me and seems to reflect Towns approach since ME has been in charge. Lambert has lurched from squad rotation to perform and the shirt is yours back to squad rotation, playing 442 for alot of last season then saying we can't play 442 and rigidly sticking to 433 playing keep ball and then last night going direct. Wheres the pragmatism? Again ME has shown no consistency in his approach: - chuck money at the situation, then bleed the club dry - allow the club to get rid of Klug and then put all the focus on the academy - appoint a manager who plays a negative brand of football and then put pressure on your next managers to play the Ipswich way - spend months searching and recruiting a manager then sack him after a few months with someone else already lined up - Give a tonne of money to a rookie managers and allow the more experienced ones to get by on a shoestring I've generally back Lambert because I do think he's managed with one hand behind his back but tactically this year he's been very puzzling to put it mildly but for me now we're starting to get players back and fit from injury time is running out. I still don't think this squad is as good as people think and that's not necessarily Lamberts fault.
I can't believe there's anyone who still thinks we've got a good squad when its patently obvious that we haven't, just look at the results.
I think there’s enough in the squad there to get promoted from this division. If you take Norwood as an example, he could score bag fulls in this division but he’s not fit and he’s not looking after himself. That said - the likes of Cornell, Chambers, Judge, Hawkins - we have some truly awful footballers at the club.
Norwood could score a lot of goals but he doesn't so needs to be replaced, Jackson has 1 more goal than red cards in the last year and doesn't want to be here so he also needs to go. There's some who think our squad should walk this pub league but they didn't last season and won't this season, and as BA says there are smaller Clubs with smaller squads who are higher in the league than us, Accrington, Doncaster, Peterborough, etc, where anyone gets the idea that this squad is the basis for promotion is unbelievable when the evidence so far seems to suggest otherwise. We don't score enough goals so we don't win enough games it's so basic.
I think everyone is being a little unkind about Judge. Ok, so he hasn't lived up to the tag of being one of the best players in this division, but he's not as bad as most make him out to be. And as for Hawkins, again bit unfair to judge him on a handful of games, especially when we there is absolutely no real width to our team. I mean, what is the point in having a 6'6 forward, when you don't get crosses in the box? As for Chambers & Cornell - totally agree (along with Tonto, Huws, Kenlock, Drinnan (who in my opinion is National league level at best)
