Will we make top 6?

Is it state the obvious night in your house or something Mystic Meg?

 

Mathematically confirmed and absolutely miles off the pace of the top 8. Disappointing end to the season to say the least and a lot of work to do over the summer.

 

The evidence to suggest this was likely a very high Points season was all there. Looks like it will be 80ish after all.

 

No, the evidence wasn't there at the time. Statistically it's meaningless to extrapolate a subset of results to a longer period of time. That's the equivalent of handing the title to Man City now because they performed better over 31 games. And it goes without saying that Ipswich had over 2 points per game under McKenna and were on course to get 75 but now have 1.8.

You can make a prediction of who will win the title next season and you might be right - it doesn't mean there is evidence now that it will happen.

 

In fact, allowing for slightly uneven games played - at the closest point last season 2020-21 when 74 points was the mark Doncaster in sixth had a slightly better points per game in sixth (1.79) than Plymouth (1.77) did on 14th February.

 

Yorkie has been on the glue again!!

 

Funny how a couple of us said the same thing, two mystic meg's, wow, how lucky is not606 Ipswich??? You could see the way it was going and the form the top ten were showing, that the top 6 were gonna accumulate a high points total, simples really

 

Kieran McKenna and his players couldn't see it - like me he's not been blessed with the precognitive powers of the pair of you. You should use your powers for good and help us get up next season.

Could either be that or... could be that all the times you make a wrong prediction you don't bother to bring it up again.

 

So, as most predicted we have fallen short and it is time to change our formation. Lets go for 2 up front last few games. Feel a shade sorry for Norwood apart from that blatant miss. All recent managers stuck to their chosen system with out success.

Being an Ipswich fan after so many years of failure and unenjoyable football it's an emotional roller coaster, and we now have glimpsed what success means again.

However, KMc is a completely different breed of manager to what we've ever seen at the club and I'm excited about this Summer transfer market and pre-season, as I am confident things will continue to develop under him. He will know what needs sorting out.
I know it's the hope that kills you, and we know that if those previous 3 games had gone our way, we could be pushing for P-offs. So, let's look forward with hope and positivity and try not get our knickers in a twist examining every defeat. We're have done ok this season, watched some great football and the damage was done before KMc arrived.

 

I don’t feel any sympathy for Norwood. He doesn’t look after his body.

This unwillingness to change things is a huge weakness at the moment. McKenna shouldn’t be keeping it the same and sending us out to try to win by the odd goal.

And it’s the old isolated lone striker thing again which means the striker is mainly waiting for chances instead of feeding off a partner to create them so it’s not just a personnel issue.

I’m not holding my breath for experimentation or playing two up but I hope to see some substantial transfer activity in forward areas.

 

FFS, you are single handedly pushing people off this forum!!!!!!

 

Yeah the tone of that post isn’t great particularly toward Bucky who’s not really put a foot wrong, but in the context of the thread and others over the season and the disappointment and frustration on a Saturday afternoon it is what it is. If tensions were not running high I don’t think debating statistics would be a particularly inflammatory topic.

Some great people, some absolute legends, have left this forum over the years. Over the years there’s also been no shortage of baiting, insults, nastiness, swearing and abuse.

I agree with Spanish that it’s got tedious.

Hopefully next season will give everyone, whether they are still posting on this forum or not, a huge lift.

 

Not aged well Hampy !

 

It’s just the same as it was at the time. Not impossible but incredibly unlikely for six teams to get to these numbers nevermind seven. Well, 84 points isn’t happening but 83 might!

I was inviting some credible statistical basis to forecast 84 points, none was forthcoming.

 

It's been a uniquely competitive season in League One. If you look back over the last eight odd seasons (ignoring the season cut short by COVID), the team that finishes sixth typically has a points total in the low 70s. It just demonstrates the strength in this division, as we're most likely looking at the team in sixth having a points total of 83, as well as the teams in 7th, 8th, and 9th picking up enough points that would've guaranteed them a play off spot in any other year. While I'll be glad to see the back of Rotherham and Wigan, if only for one year, the likes of Derby, Peterborough, and Barnsley coming down is a little concerning as Derby could have a clean slate and some financial backing under the new owner, while the latter two have been there and done it in League One.

Interesting to see that the four promoted teams from League Two last season all look to have survived the drop (Morecambe two points off relegation with one game left). Not only that - Bolton, Cambridge, and Cheltenham all look set to finish in and around the mid-table places.

 

Derby in particular is an interesting case nuggets. I think if Rooney sticks with them then I think we’re looking at one remaining available auto promotion spot and one play off winners spot between 11 other competitive sides, of which Town have so far proven to be one of the weaker. That’s a huge gap to bridge in the summer.

 

It will be interesting to see if Rooney does stay - I imagine he won't be short of job offers elsewhere. Agreed it's a considerable gap to bridge, although I hope Derby fall in the Sunderland/Ipswich/Portsmouth 'big club' conundrum of being unable to quickly return to the Championship. Worryingly, for me, both Peterborough and Barnsley seem better equipped to make a credible play off push next season.

The summer transfer business will obviously be key. I'd like to think we'd be able to resolve the left-back issue, where we've arguably haven't had a good, consistent left-back since the Knudsen years. We need some extra bite in central midfield, so resolving who partners Morsy (whether that's someone like Evans, Harper, or we buy somebody new) is crucial. A bit more creativity in the attacking midfield places, over the course of a season, will be required. I'd hope we can retain Celina, although he does blow hot and cold. I'd like to see Chaplin actually being given a run of starts, as I think he's been massively under-used by us this season. Burns on the right will hopefully repeat his success this year. And then we get to the strikers. I think it's clear we need a more consistent goalscorer, which we thought we got with Piggott from last season, but he's been a massive disappointment. I wouldn't sign Bonne permanently. And I think Jackson and Norwood are too unreliable in front of goal to score 20+ goals a season in this division.

 

I'm sure not many messages have aged well on here.

Quite a depressing end to the season and certainly McKenna has alot of questions to answer and decisions to make both in the transfer market and tactically. Even if the squad were to be the same next season in my mind it still should be good enough to make playoffs at a minimum next season especially with a proper preseason in them and having had a year together (the whole forming, storming, norming thing). Whilst there are definitely areas to strengthen we have good players all over the park, next season we need to have more balance particularly in the middle of the park, in the forward positions and down the left and tactics which get the best out of what we've got.

On paper this has been one of the worst if not the worst season on record. We've spent big on players for this league and have got enough quality in the team to in my mind be at least a mid table championship team with the best squad we've had in years, yet we've regressed despite last year having a bunch of average, injury prone has beens littered with academy players who shouldn't have been in the team, if we don't win on Saturday we will finish on less points than last season (which Cook cocked up). In my mind lots of mistakes have been made, Cook made alot of questionable decisions but in my mind given his previous success and how this season has ended up we didn't handle him very well, and actually in terms of the league we weren't in that bad form (under McKenna we've been on a worse run of sustained form) but we sacked an experienced proven manager in this division who pretty much every club he's been at has got promoted in 1 or 2 seasons for a Rookie because we thought appointing him would give us a chance this season. Looking as an outsider a decision like that could've been enough for Ashton to fall on his sword.

Despite this pretty much being technically the worst season in over 50 years this is the first season in a long time I've enjoyed pretty much every game I've watched (under Cook and McKenna), I watch us now and know most of the time I'll enjoy it, pretty much since the day Keane joined our club I turned up to most games thinking I would be pretty much guaranteed to watch dross. Plus it feels like the love is back in the club, the stadium has been shown some tlc, and so have the fans. I feel like under ME we missed a whole generation of fans as I know if I'd have turned up to watch us in that period for my first game I don't think I would have come back. I feel like now we've got enough about us to get kids to fall in love with football at PR again.

So there is definitely a feeling of optimism there but whilst the football is more entertaining and consistent and it feels like we've got foundations to build on, we need to be alot lot better next season if we are to challenge and that goes for McKenna as well, it's not simply a personnel issue which will fix our lack of goals.