Caretaker-manager Ian McParland admitted that Town’s 7-0 FA Cup embarrassment at Chelsea was the worst result of his coaching and management career. The match, the Blues' worst ever defeat in the competition, looks likely to be McParland’s one game in charge with Town set to name Paul Jewell as their new manager on Monday.
McParland says it won’t be easy for the team to get over such a heavy loss: "I’ve been a manager and a coach for years, and I’ve never been beaten like that. It hurts my pride. They’ll bounce back, I’ll bounce back. It’s up to the players.
"Let’s not forget who they are playing against. I think there are Premier League clubs who came down here and lost by seven and eight last year. We’re maybe in good company. Let’s not forget the other teams which have come down here and got a good hiding. But it doesn’t make it any easier for me.”
The man known as throughout football as Charlie says he thought the tie could go one of two ways before kick-off: "I knew what was going to happen today. We’re a few players down, the boys are a bit shellshocked with the manager going on Thursday and even with our strongest team we’d have had a struggle on down here because we’ve huffed and puffed in the Championship.
"I thought we would either give a good account of ourselves or we could take a good thrashing, and unfortunately it was the latter.”
McParland says it’s impossible to say whether the game would have gone better had Roy Keane still been manager: "It’s hard to say whether it would have been any different had Roy still been here. I’d like to think it would have been. Who knows?
"For half an hour we were doing OK, we were in the game. Then we gave them three quick goals, three bad goals, especially the own goal, and we crumbled a little bit. Our players were chasing the Chelsea players about, top class players, and they got tired. The way we conceded goals wasn’t good.”
The 49-year-old coach had sympathy with Town’s 3,000-strong travelling support: "I feel sorry for the Ipswich fans today.
"They’re a good bunch of fans, it’s a good football club and I just hope the new man that comes in can deliver some success and put smiles on their faces.
"The fans were fantastic today, they came and enjoyed their day. I think they enjoyed it a little bit better than me.”
McParland, who expects to leave the club when the new manager is appointed, says he knows nothing of the club’s timetable, but feels the incoming boss has a difficult task on his hands: "I think he’s got a very tough job. He’ll be sitting up there watching and I hope he’s in by Wednesday [before the Arsenal Carling Cup semi-final].”
Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti says his recently struggling team will benefit from the display and victory: "We needed to have this type of performance and the result was good.
"There were a lot of things we did well in this game - the performance of the team, a lot of strikers came back to score - Anelka and Lampard.
"But obviously we don’t have to get excited because we have to give the same performance next week against Blackburn. With this victory our confidence will improve.”
The Italian felt the game was a contest for the first half hour: "In the first 30 minutes I was a little bit worried, there was less confidence in our play. But when we scored the first goal, everything was OK.
"In the first 30 minutes Ipswich played a good game, after that they defended well, they had two good opportunities, one shot from distance, one from a cross.
"They played a good game for 30 minutes, after the first goal it was easier for us to play our football, to counter-attack and to score more goals.”