Posh v Town, is Lambert taking the P**S?

In reality our squad on paper is well above the standard for L1 but on the park, decimated by long term injuries and inconsistent management & woeful ownership, we have reliably underperformed against all top 10 teams, and some weaker ones.

Critically, club confidence is melting away, as has supporters'.

 

I think another key factor in the club's slump is a lack of confidence. The players do not look confident taking the initiative in the final third, they do not look confident going into games against teams higher up in the table, and they do not have any self-belief they can turn games around when they go behind. This is a club that appears too settled and complacent, even in the third division. Remember when McGoldrick left a few years ago and reveled at the ambition a club like Sheffield United was showing, in comparison to Town. So this complacency is not a recent issue, it's been prevalent at the club ever since the failed 2014/15 play off season, in my opinion.

Rightly or wrongly, I do not get the impression that our owner, manager, or coaching staff are pushing the players to perform better than they have been. Back in the Championship days, we embraced an identity of plucky underdogs that scrapped for every point. In my opinion, that self-identity has devolved into a paranoid mindset, using our budget and financial standing as all-too-easily-used and well-thumbed excuses. The club lashes out at anyone - supporter, former employee, even the local media - that is willing to tell it the truth. Since when did Ipswich Town - widely seen as a family club - ban journalists from press conferences? It's petty. It's spiteful. It's not Ipswich.

 

I have a rather cynical view of things....what if a lot of the more senior players don't want to get promoted? If we did, a number of them could be out of the door as they are not deemed good enough for the championship, and are happy to pick up their lucrative contracts

 

That's a good point stretchy, and if we did fluke promotion how do we think this squad would perform in the Championship ? Too bloody frighteniing to think about because Evans wouldn't provide the finance to strengthen the team it would be a slaughter every week with this rabble.

 

It's possibly Stretchy, underperformance and relegation was accepted with very little consequence by this owner and coaching team. I don't think there's been a willing mentality and culture at this club for a very long time. Even under Mick McCarthy, it was tempered with an 'us against them' mentality. The idea that we had our place as a scrappy upstart competing against big-spending second-tier opposition, and that it was unreasonable to hope for promotion and/or entertaining football.

It's been mentioned on here before, but I honestly believe it was Paul Hurst who identified this lack of a winning culture from the start and tried - abysmally - to change it. The main problems with Hurst and his coaching team is that he thought treating with players with disdain and buying a load of League One and League Two quality players was the solution. He was rightly sacked, but it's frustrating to see that Lambert has been allowed to oversee an equally damaging stint at the club that has somehow been allowed to prolong over more than two years. I honestly believe that we do not owe players like Chambers, Skuse, and Sears anything. These experienced, senior 'solid pros' have contributed to the club's recent decline and have not put in a consistent run of good performances for the club in over three years, despite the drop down into the third division. They've been well-paid for their time at this club and their 'experience' has been overseeing, and arguably allowing, a slide of standards on their watch.

When we appoint a new manager - and I sincerely wish it will be sooner, rather than later - that person needs to be strong-minded, passionate, and clear about improving the whole club's mentality. Yes, the owner is largely absent, seemingly uninterested, and has allowed the club to massively decline over the last decade. But what a new manager absolutely can do is set the expected standards on the training pitch, identify and seek ambitious footballers, change the mindset of the players and the club's staff, and is not going to be beholden to the cabal of 'senior pros' at this club - just because they've been here for over five years. If they can do that while striking the right tone and getting the buy-in from the good players that we do have at the club, then our on-pitch performances and results will improve.

 

I know we have and have had lots of injuries in the past few years but the squad for me, is way too big. There are too many players in & around the 1st team. Need to offload the high earners and rebuild from the ground up with emphasis on youth. Lambert is clearly not the man for that job. I would like to see our youngsters (rather than loan players) be given a run of games. Likes of Dobra, mcgavern, lankester not just given a single game here and there but a proper run in the side and start developing more of an understanding as a team

 

Totally agree Royston....a quick look look at our squad shows we have 33 players that could easily be part of our matchday squad, including loanees (I've also included Nydam as well), which is a ridiculous amount.

Tomas HOLY
Mark MCGUINNESS
Stephen WARD
Luke CHAMBERS
James WILSON
Luke WOOLFENDEN
Gwion EDWARDS
Cole SKUSE
Kayden JACKSON
James NORWOOD
Jon NOLAN
Jack LANKESTER
Teddy BISHOP
Keanan BENNETTS
Alan JUDGE
Freddie SEARS
Flynn DOWNES
Aristote NSIALA
Andre DOZZELL
Kane VINCENT-YOUNG
Aaron DRINAN
Idris EL MIZOUNI
Luke THOMAS
David CORNELL
Myles KENLOCK
Oliver HAWKINS
Josh HARROP
Armando DOBRA
Troy PARROTT
Luke MATHESON
Brett MCGAVIN
Emyr HUWS
Tristan NYDAM

 

I think we have enough quality in the squad to get promoted but what we don't have which other clubs may do is players who perform consistently week in week out. And very few ever have in their careers either because a) they're a youngster with little experience b) they've had so many injuries they haven't played enough games c) they haven't performed consistently at this level or higher and some of them all 3, add to that as Nuggets has said the fact i don't think the senior players have stepped up over recent seasons (particularly Chambers and Skuse) and haven't managed to galvanise the club you realise our squad is built on sand. From the outside Chambers and Skuse don't seem to be bad eggs as such but they seem to have the same mentality as Mick, quite content to do a half decent job and really seem to have lacked that ambition and experience to pass on to the other players.

At the back you expect youngsters to make mistakes but Chambers and Nsiala constantly make mistakes.

 

We've too many players who haven't proven themselves here or elsewhere and lack that resilience both physically and mentally. Get a few more senior characters in there and a bit more experience under some of the youngsters belts and I don't think we're far off. Its just not a good balance

 

I thought the lad Szmodics was just the sort of player we would really benefit from.He was always available to take the ball and spray around good passes where it hurt us and could have scored.

 

He was involved in everything good for them. But you have to ask yourself if he came to Town would he be fit, would he be motivated, would he perform? At first perhaps, but surrounded by garbage and stifled by the manager you could put any player in this side and make a non-league player of them within a couple of months.

 

I can't think of who these quality players are who are going to get us promoted, the strikers don't score enough, in midfield Dozell is so poor he's had 9 yellow cards and we have a defence that can't stop shipping goals, we are a poor side in a poor league.

 

Completely agree we have too big a squad, over the summer some tough decisions need to be made as the scary thing is I think out of that list over the past few seasons the majority of those players have had a long term injury. Even with a squad that size over the past couple of seasons there has rarely been a game where I've thought we don't look lightweight because of injuries we've had.

Do we get rid of players who are injury prone like we have done previously (McGoldrick and Webster) who then end up pretty being ever presents for their current Premier Leagues teams. As I write this it just feels like we may as well give up now as this injury thing has been going on for years

 

I genuinely think if we played Sears and Norwood in a 2 together upfront we'd have one of the best frontlines in the division. Unfortunately Norwood can't stay fit, Lambert rarely plays 2 up top and if he does it isn't Sears.

We do have good players for this division KVY, Woolfenden, Ward, Downes, Judge, Norwood, Edwards, Sears (as a striker) plus a load of players with potential who need to get some games under their belt unfortunately no-one seems to be able to stay fit for long enough and there's no balance to the teams or consistency. We also need a couple of experienced players in there (not Skuse and Chambers) who've played well at this level or above for a number of seasons who can drive the team on and be an example to the younger players, preferably a CB and CM. Someone like a Liam Bridcutt who Lincoln picked up and Richard Keogh who MK Dons signed. We don't seem to have signed any good senior pros who've had good experience at a higher level for years, we seem to sign players who've got little experience, had injuries or right at the end of their careers

 

I think David McGoldrick, who has just made his 100th appearance for Sheffield United, is a great illustration of where our failings really lie. The rotten ownership and management at Ipswich Town sucks the form out of otherwise capable players just as mould spreads in a fruit bowl.

Luke Woolfenden stands out as a bright talent who in another era with top coaching and the right players around him could have held his own in the top flight. As it stands he is becoming error prone and losing his footballing touch, but it’s not too late for him to move on and be nurtured on to better things.

Andre Dozzell had potential when he first broke into the side but Mick McCarthy failed to coach him in either tackling back or attacking, which means we’re left with a player who can pass the ball sweetly when the rest of the side is flowing but otherwise has nothing to his game. That’s coupled with the fact that as a midfielder, there are only so many matches you can play where the defence is a shambles and it’s impossible to feed the isolated striker before you start to wonder what’s the point of giving your all. That kind of frustration must be manifesting in every single player in every position in a performance like we saw at Peterborough.

Players are at different levels of potential, but I would say we comfortably have the players in the squad if we had the right management coaching them and setting them up on match day.

Our biggest problems are with the attacking line, but between Bishop, Edwards, Sears, Norwood, Jackson I think we could have a free scoring team if they were fit and firing on all cylinders. Throwing more and more numbers of unproven forwards into a failing system instead of working on chance creation and finishing with those names is a recipe for worse things to come.

 

SInce the disgraceful sacking of JM there's only one manager who has improved the league standing of our Club and that was MM, even then extremely briefly.
The rest over a period of roughly 10 years have reduced our league position without exception, so was every manager we've had in Evans tenure been as useless as our owner or have they all been hamstrung by Evans disastrous policy ?
Its often mentioned that Keane was given a huge amount of money but in fact in football terms it was a piddling amount and certainly not exceptional, now I've no doubt that our managers have been poor but I can't help thinking that the finance necessary to take the Club forward was never there, but after all if as Evans annually states we have lost millions which he has covered then why not invest the millions he miraculously finds every year in the team in the first place ? It would seem to indicate that the money is there all along but he chooses not to invest in the playing and management staff which after all are the people who can take the Club forward.

 

From a outsider watching the match Tuesday i saw nothing in Ipswich or the team you use to be
something must be rotten behind the scenes Ipswich always use to play good football and the fans always was a passionate lot

 

MM left us in much worse shape than he took over, not entirely his own fault but very much complicit in the way the club was run.

Paul Hurst tried to shake things up and was given short shrift.

There are managers out there who could knock these players into shape enough to mount a challenge but for the most part Evans wouldn’t pay their salaries. The players are not there to dominate this division though and they’re certainly not there to compete in the Championship. We continue to invest our time and money in nurturing other clubs’ talent and until we invest in permanent transfers and a manager who is trying to build a quality team we will go on struggling.

 

Pretty much agree with the whole thing apart from Keane being allowed to spend alot of money. He had a bigger transfer budget than any other ITFC manager. Even in todays money (bar clubs who have parachute payments) that would be considered big money. He must've spent nearly £10 million in one transfer window. The 4 managers since him haven't collectively that to spend in 10 years.

 

He spent £7m in that window and it was offset by £3m in for Walters and other transfers out offset other spending. His net was something like £4m. When you consider the fees we’ve had for Cresswell, Mings and Wickham it’s peanuts.