In the 12th part of the series, Kieron Dyer catches up with David McGoldrick, who selects the best XI from his time playing for the Blues before Dyer runs the rule over the team.
Goalkeeper Bartosz Bialkowski - Great shot-stopper from close range, always had confidence with him in goal.
Right-back Richard Stearman - Played four months on loan when we survived relegation and was a key part of the defence. All-round good footballer.
Left-back Aaron Cresswell - One of best left feet, can make any run and he will find you. And played it in to my feet a lot when I was in the number 10 role.
Centre-half Adam Webster - Loved to try play out from the back and start us playing.
Centre-half Luke Chambers - Warrior, true captain on and off pitch. And a good footballer with all of that included.
Midfield Cole Skuse - All-round good footballer with a bit of everything, is as important part to the team on and off the ball and never lets the team down.
Midfield Tom Lawrence - Quick, skilful and a finisher. Used to love playing with him as was always positive on the ball when got it.
Midfield Bersant Celina - Bag of tricks, wanted to score and assist, took his time.
Left wing Ryan Fraser - Direct and quick, was a good outlet all the time, won us loads of penalties and got assists and goals for us.
Right wing Martyn Waghorn - Was on fire for the season was here. Scored all different types of goals and was good on set pieces which was our main threat.
Centre forward Daryl Murphy - Power house. Scored goals of all types. Enjoyed playing with him as a partner.
Kieron’s View
Bart’s selection in goal speaks for itself, as I’ve said before he’s a cert to go into the Town Hall of Fame having been Player of the Year three years on the trot, something that’s going to be very hard to replicate.
Aaron Cresswell, who I previously talked about when he was in Bailey Clements’s team, had a brilliant spell here and went on to bigger and better things in the Premier League.
This is the first time Adam Webster’s appeared in the team. Didzy talks about him being a ball-playing centre-half who loved to play from the back and he’s well worth his starting place in the team. It’s just a shame that we sold him for peanuts and then Bristol City sold him for £21 million!
Injuries hampered his Ipswich career but when he was on the pitch you could tell he was going to be a decent player.
As I’ve said before Chambo has his critics but it seems that every XI with a player who played in this era has picked him.
Didzy’s picked Chambo and he’s gone for Richard Stearman at right-back and I’m afraid I’m not having that. He said he had "four months on loan when we survived relegation and was a key part of the defence”.
Yep, he probably did play a massive part but Carlos Edwards has to be in that team in front of Stearman for me, 100 per cent. I don’t what Didz was thinking there, no disrespect to Stearman, but Carlos had a better career than Richard Stearman. They were together at Sheffield United until recently so maybe Didz has picked him because he’s his best mate.
In midfield, he’s gone for Skusey as the defensive midfielder, another player who has his critics but as these XIs come out from this era you’ll see that Skusey is a name that pops up quite a bit, so you can’t really argue with that.
I love Didzy’s midfield in front of that. It’s quite unique that three of his attacking players weren’t actually Ipswich Town players - Tom Lawrence, Bersant Celina and Ryan Fraser.
They were all big loan players for us and I remember when I was on Life’s a Pitch I said I’m sick and tired of us getting loan players in that stop the progression of our own from the academy, but if you get in long-term loans that can set the standard for our young players, showing them what they’ve got to reach, you can live with that because they make them better players.
So when you’re talking about Lawrence, Celina and Fraser, all of them had unbelievable loan spells and rightly have made Didz’s team.
Another loan player at around the same time who was a fans’ favourite and had a purple patch was Jonny Williams. He played with Didz but you can’t have too many arguments with that midfield, it’s just a shame than none of them were actually our own players.
It’s a very attacking line-up, poor Cole Skuse, he’ll have his work cut out there, but the fans have been begging for attacking football as they were bored fo Mick McCarthy’s football, so maybe this is the answer. If we lose, we lose 5-4 or 4-3, at least it would bring some entertainment to Portman Road.
It is a bit of a lop-sided team but it’s got a lot of attacking flair and it’s going to have a lot of goals in it. It’s a bit like Osvaldo Ardiles’s Tottenham team with the famous five - Teddy Sheringham, Jurgen Klinsmann, Nick Barmby, Darren Anderton and Ilie Dumitrescu.
We’ve not talked about Martyn Waghorn before. As Didz says, he’s scored all different types of goals, he was unbelievable at set pieces.
We’ve talked about this team being an attacking team but to be fair, he and Ryan Fraser in the wide positions, they worked hard getting back, they put in a proper shift.
It was just a shame that Derby came calling and the wages he was going to be paid were probably life-changing for him. But the season he left and we went down we really struggled for goals and he would have given us goals.
If you’d got him on the right, Ryan Fraser on the left and Murph in the middle, that’s an attack with a lot of pace and power.
What I like about Daryl Murphy, he’s probably nowhere near the power he was at Ipswich but he’s been in a Bolton team that’s struggling and he’s still scoring goals and doing OK.
As I said when he was included in other teams, he scored 27 goals in the Championship in the play-off season in which Didzy got injured just after Christmas when we had a real chance of doing even better than we did. What might have happened had Didzy stayed fit is one of the big, big ifs.
As I’ve been going through these XIs, you hear a lot of fans saying that since the Joe Royle era we haven’t had a lot of success and there have been dark times, but when you look at the teams that these players have come up with, you think that these teams could compete at the top of the Championship.
It just goes to show how many bad injuries we’ve had and how we’ve not been able to get all these players on the pitch at the same time. I would never have thought that these teams, especially players from the last six or seven years, and Bailey Clements who has been a supporter since 2009, when you look at all their teams, we haven’t half had some talent.
I know different players have come at different stages but the tools have been there. Have managers not got the best out of them? Have they not been on the pitch at the same time? But these teams I’ve seen so far should all be competing for the Championship play-offs, no doubt, which is a shame really.
Didzy’s team is very attacking, I’m not having Stearman at right-back in front of Carlos Edwards, but other than that I can’t really argue.