Blues boss Paul Jewell says he’s fed up with opposition managers saying nice things about Town after games from which his side has failed to pick up points. Tony Mowbray joined Blackpool’s Ian Holloway in praising the Blues in defeat after his Boro team ran out 2-0 victors at the Riverside on Saturday.
Jewell says he was pleased with the performance but is frustrated that his side couldn’t make it count by scoring goals: "We played really well. The scoreline wasn’t a true reflection of the possession and the opportunities that both sides had.
"We played good football, we just couldn’t finish it off by scoring the goals that make the difference to a good performance.
"It’s nice managers saying things about us, but I’d rather they were saying how lucky we were that we got three points.
"I spoke to Tony Mowbray, Gary Megson as well, and I spoke to Ian Holloway after they beat us and they said nice things about us. I don’t want to hear nice things about us, I want us winning matches.”
He felt his team could have done better in and around the penalty area against the Teessiders: "I just thought we were a bit wasteful, a bit sloppy in really good situations. It wasn’t as if we missed chance after chance, we had opportunities to make chances.
"I think we scored more goals than Reading last year, but obviously our goals against column has always been a cause for concern about us.
"On Saturday, I said to the players that if we’d got a goal you sensed that the ground and the Middlesbrough support could have turned against them and we could have gone on to win the game comfortably.
"It’s at key times in games that we’re not scoring goals or we’re conceding a goal which changes the whole direction of the game. We’ve just got to be a bit more ruthless in both boxes.
"It’s obviously very frustrating, but we did play well on Saturday and anyone who was there and has a modicum of football common sense knows that we passed the ball, we made opportunities but we just weren’t clinical enough in front of goal to turn opportunities and possession into goals.”
He says that it's all very well playing attractive football but it counts for nothing if it doesn’t lead to goals: "I’ve got all the stats which show how many passes we had more than Middlesbrough, how many passes more we had than Blackburn. But both those sides have got more points than us.
"People will talk about wanting a passing team, the ‘Ipswich way’. The way I like to do it is the ‘winning way' - to play good football and win, and that’s what we’re trying to do, but we’re some way off that at the moment.”
He’s well aware that the paying public ultimately judges managers on results: "The fans have been patient, but fans’ patience runs out eventually.
"If we weren’t playing any good football, if we were just getting brushed aside, that would be more concerning, but we played well on Saturday.
"We did OK against Blackburn, who are one of the favourites, the result against Huddersfield could have gone either way. The only game where we were soundly beaten was Blackpool.
"The table could look different, but it doesn’t and I live in a world not of ‘ifs’ but of reality, and the reality is that out of five games we’ve drawn two, lost two and only won one.”
But he says there is an awful lot of the season still to go: "No team’s ever been promoted after five games, or relegated after five games. I think the table starts taking shape after 15 games maybe.
"That’s the world I live in. The world that most people live in is one where they look at the league table today. It’s either all doom and gloom or it’s all hype.
"I’m aware of what this league’s about, how difficult it is and how quickly it can change one way or the other.”