McCarthy After Return to Clean Sheets as Blues Face Blackburn Chasing First Win of 2017 Friday, 13th Jan 2017 16:39 Town face Blackburn Rovers at Portman Road on Saturday afternoon looking for their first win of 2017 and hoping to emulate their performance at Ewood Park in October, which manager Mick McCarthy felt deserved more than a 0-0 draw. Rovers keeper Jason Steele was widely viewed as the man of the match on that occasion having made vital stops from Adam Webster, Freddie Sears and Tom Lawrence. “We played very well that day, it was another game we probably should have won, should have had the three points but didn’t because of our failure to score,” McCarthy recalled. “That was a period where we were having clean sheets but the opposition were as well. “We need to get back to keeping clean sheets because if we’ve got something to build on we’re going to be far better.” Despite playing well at QPR in their last Championship game the Blues fell to a 2-1 defeat with both the home side’s goals down to defensive errors. Individual mistakes at the back have been an all too regular occurrence in recent weeks but McCarthy says there’s been no additional work on defending as a result. “Not really any more than usual,” he said. “You do that on a regular basis, we work on defensive work, defensive shape, covering positions, all of it. We don’t just suddenly stop everything and start working on that.” Blackburn beat Newcastle 1-0 in their last league game, their second victory over the second-placed Magpies this season. “They’ve got some good players,” McCarthy added. “I never thought they’d got anything other than a good squad of players and Coyley [manager Owen Coyle] just seems to have got it going at the moment, they’ve had some good results. “They went to QPR and won [2-1 in the FA Cup] and we’ve seen that QPR have just had three wins on the bounce in the league, they played very well last night. They’ve got good players, Blackburn.” McCarthy says that while the pressure they are currently under is tough for his players they're all coping. “It is, but I’ve had nobody coming in asking me not to play or complaining about it,” he said. “We try and keep a very stable atmosphere, a very consistent one around the building, and that’s the case now. “I don’t see too many of them struggling with it at all. Maybe on a Saturday afternoon when it’s just not going right that’s when I need them to be strong and to be able to play in front of it.” Does he feel players have on occasion frozen in what’s recently been a hostile atmosphere? “Not in the last three games,” he insisted. “You’ve seen the cup results, Liverpool are going back to Plymouth, there were a lot of upsets in the cup. Millwall beat Bournemouth. “All right, they made 11 changes but they beat them 3-0. We had a really tough game against Lincoln but we didn’t lose it, so we’re on the TV on Tuesday. “I’ve been involved in those cup ties when I was at Barnsley in the Fourth Division and we were beating teams and it’s great. “Unfortunately when you’re on the opposite side of it and you’re in the Championship and a National League side comes and almost gives you a going over it’s very embarrassing and it’s not nice. But that’s football. “But our previous two performances in the league were good, certainly against Bristol City here and against QPR.” Regarding the atmosphere, which has seen McCarthy and individual players booed and jeered at Portman Road and at away grounds recently, he added: “I can’t do anything about it before the game, I can only try and prepare the team so we are motivated, play well and are competitive and try and win the game. “And if we do, as we saw against Bristol City, we get good support. If we don’t I fully understand that we wouldn’t. When we’re at home they expect us to win, I’ve no problem with that.” McCarthy seems certain to bring Bartosz Bialkowski back in goal, while skipper Luke Chambers will return at right-back and Jonas Knudsen will continue at left-back with Myles Kenlock still out with a calf problem. Christophe Berra and Adam Webster will be at the heart of the defence with Cole Skuse returning to his central midfield berth, probably alongside Kevin Bru. Grant Ward is likely to be on the right and Tom Lawrence on the left with Freddie Sears up front with either Brett Pitman or Leon Best depending on whether the former AFC Bournemouth man is over his calf injury. McCarthy says the current dearth of strikers - David McGoldrick is out with a hamstring problem and Luke Varney moved on to Burton earlier in the month - gives summer signing and former Rovers frontman Best a chance to make an impression having failed to establish himself in his first half-season at the club. “He came in and he was injured, he had a bit of a groin problem,” McCarthy said. “He got in the team, he did OK but, if I’m going to be honest, he didn’t rip it up and if he had he’d have still been in the team. “Other players came back and he lost his spot. There can’t be a better opportunity now with the strikers that we haven’t got rather than we have got. Opportunity knocks for him.” The Town boss also confirmed that 17-year-old England U18 international striker Ben Morris would be in the squad, having been on the bench for last week’s FA Cup tie. “I think he’s developing OK, if he was ripping it up [in the U23s] and was ripping it up in training with us, he’d have been in the squad and he’d have been involved all the time,” McCarthy continued. “He scored two in the old versus young this morning, which was pretty good, one was a good strike and one he just followed in from a shot, which is encouraging because he was Johnny on the spot.”
Blackburn will be without midfielders Craig Conway (hamstring) and Corry Evans (groin), while Adam Henley (hamstring), Elliott Ward (ankle) and Tommie Hoban (shoulder) remain long-term absentees. Midfielder or centre-half Darragh Lenihan will be back from a three-game ban, while striker Marvin Emnes returns having been cup-tied for last week’s FA Cup win at QPR. Jason Steele is expected take over from David Raya in goal after being rested for the visit to Loftus Road. Manager Owen Coyle is pleased to be going into the game after three positive results having lost four on the trot prior to that. "Obviously everybody enjoyed how hard we worked last week in winning an important cup-tie and that now sets us up for getting back to league business," he told Rovers Player HD.
"That means Ipswich away from home, a game we go to off the back of the [1-1] draw at Huddersfield and the [1-0] win over Newcastle. "We've said before that momentum in this league is very important. You only have to look at Queens Park Rangers, they lost six on the bounce, Bristol City are in the middle of that type of league run as well. “But equally on the other side of that the Championship has shown that you can string those wins together and that is what we have got to look to do. "We obviously go to Ipswich looking to get a positive result and then it sets us up for some home games coming after that. So it is important that we look to continue that momentum. "We know that our objective is to move up the table and we want to be doing that sooner rather than later. The only way to do that is to keep picking up points so the onus is on us to continue that momentum to start elevating ourselves up the league." Town have had the upper hand on Rovers over the years, winning 18 games (15 in the league), losing 15 (14) and drawing 17 (16). The Blues have gone 21 league games without repeating the same result in successive matches - since they drew with Wolves and Norwich in August - and if they fail to lose to Rovers they will equal a club record of 22 established in 1965/66. In October, Town stretched their goalless and winless run to five games as their visit to Ewood Park ended in a 0-0 draw. However, the Blues will have felt they had enough chances to have won it with Adam Webster, Luke Chambers and Tom Lawrence all going close in the first half, while the on-loan Leicester man had the best opportunity after the break. The teams met most recently at Portman Road in March last year when Daryl Murphy celebrated his 33rd birthday by scoring two second-half goals to see the Blues to a 2-0 victory. The Irishman netted the first from the penalty spot in the 67th minute and added the second three minutes from the end of scheduled time. Town midfielder Jonathan Douglas joined Blackburn from hometown club Monaghan United as an 18-year-old in 2000 but spent much of his time with Rovers out on loan and made only 16 starts and eight sub appearances in six years at Ewood Park, scoring once. Leon Best joined Blackburn from Newcastle for a fee of £3 million in July 2012 but made only 11 starts and five sub appearances, scoring twice, in a three-year spell, much of which was spent out on loan. Tom Lawrence was on loan at Blackburn from Leicester for the first half of last season, making 15 starts and eight sub appearances, netting twice. Rovers winger Liam Feeney spent the end of last season on loan with the Blues from Bolton Wanderers, making seven starts and two sub appearances, scoring one goal. The 30-year-old came close to joining Town on a permanent basis in the summer before Rovers offered a very significantly more lucrative contract and he moved to Ewood Park, where he had previously been on loan during 2014. Blackburn’s 23-year-old Irish defender Derrick Williams regularly trained with the Town Academy during the school holidays as a youngster but ultimately opted to join Aston Villa as a scholar. He moved to Ewood Park from Bristol City in the summer. Rovers’ head of athletic performance is former Town keeper Chris Neville, who came through the Blues’ youth set-up and made one senior appearance in the 1989/90 season - a 3-1 win at West Brom - before a knee injury forced him to retire. Saturday’s referee is James Linington from Newport Isle-of-Wight, who has shown 91 yellow cards and one red in 19 games so far this season. Linington’s most recent Town match was the 2-1 home victory over Sheffield Wednesday in August 2015 in which he booked Jonathan Douglas and Ryan Fraser and two of the visitors. Prior to that he took charge of the 3-2 home win against Blackpool April 2015 in which he kept his cards in his pocket throughout. Earlier in the 2014/15 season he was in charge of the 2-2 draw at Nottingham Forest, when he booked only one home player, and the 2-0 victory over Middlesbrough at Portman Road in which he yellow-carded David McGoldrick and three Teessiders. Squad from: Bialkowski, Gerken, Chambers (c), Knudsen, Emmanuel, Webster, Berra, Digby, Skuse, Douglas, Bru, Dozzell, McDonnell, Ward, Lawrence, Sears, Best, Pitman, Morris.
Photo: TWTD Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
You need to login in order to post your comments |
   Blogs 295 bloggersIpswich Town Polls[ Vote here ] |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.We in turn value your personal details in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
