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Lambert Dismisses Dressing Room Mutiny Claim - Ipswich Town News

Manager Paul Lambert has dismissed claims that there is a dressing room mutiny at Town and says he laughs at reports along those lines.

Earlier in the week, Football Insider claimed that Lambert was facing dressing room unrest with relationships between the Blues boss and some of his senior players "fractured”.

Asked to address the report, Lambert said: "I’m pretty sure you can ask any player [about] that [and] I’ve never had fallout with [them].

"I have a laugh with them, I never have any arguments with them. I tell them if I don’t think they’re doing well.

"The world is brilliant, isn’t it? You read a tweet and you guys believe it. I can’t do anything about that.

"If somebody tells me Bart was in the tunnel arguing with a steward and somebody put it on a site and said it was a fight. Bart left here two years ago. It’s bizarre.

"I just laugh at all that nonsense, I just laugh. I don’t get involved in it. I don’t read anything, I don’t get involved, I just laugh.”

Marcus Evans publicly backed Lambert last month and is understood to still be firmly behind him and Lambert was asked whether the owner has given him any reassurance since last week’s 3-2 home defeat to strugglers Swindon.

"Number one, I don’t listen to any of that stuff. I don’t get involved with all that. Marcus has been good with us,” he said.

"Saturday, I was watching it, it wasn’t good enough. We never fought, we never ran, we never did the hard yards, never did the other side of the game.

"It doesn’t matter what type of footballer you are, you have to put the work in and I don’t think we ran hard enough on Saturday. We just relied on us maybe creating something or us trying to do something ability-wise.

"But ability-wise doesn’t always win you games, you’ve got to put the hard work in. Like any job, you’ve got to put the hard work in.”

Is he confident Evans will continue to back him? "I don’t really care, to be honest. What do you do? I said this to you last season, if Marcus says to go, you go. If Marcus says you say, you stay. I don’t have a problem. I get on really well with him, I don’t really get involved with this stuff.”

Asked to clarify what he meant by that, he added: "What I’m saying is, what can I do about it? If somebody comes and says ‘listen, you need to leave’, what can I do? You just say ‘OK, thank you very much, see you later’.

"You have to remember, I was at the highest level of football and I know how it works. I’ve worked with unbelievable managers, no stress, no nothing, pure stone cold focused on what I had to do.

"If Marcus says ‘Paul, you need to move’, what can I do? That’s what I mean by that, what can I actually do about it? Beg him and say ‘come on, come on!’? What do you do? There’s nothing I can do, that’s what I mean by that.

"The only answer is for us to try and get results, not for my sake but for the club’s sake and for the players’ sake to try and be successful. That’s our job, to try and make them successful, but there’s not a thing I can do with that if Marcus says anything like that, and I said that two years ago. If Marcus came to me, good, bad or indifferent and says I have to go, what can I do? Nothing.”

Would it hurt him if he left Town without having achieved what he’s wanted to achieve, chiefly getting the Blues back in the Championship? "If you don’t win any game of football, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a player or a manager, that always hurts you.

"That competitive thing never leaves you. If I was playing you at football in a one-v-one situation, I’d put you right on your arse because there’s no way you’d beat me.

"And it’s the same as a manager, it absolutely hurts you, the same as a player, it hurts you, and that’s the way it works.

"But when you get a decision which you can’t control, OK, no problem. There’s nothing you can do to control that, that comes from the hierarchy.

"Marcus has been great, I think he’s said to you guys [the media] that he knows the constraints we’re under here, so I hope you write it the right way where there’s nothing I can do about it. When you lose, you lose, that hurts and that’s always the case. But there aren’t too many times I’ve lost.”

Earlier in the week, the South West Branch of the Supporters Club joined independent fans’ group Blue Action in calling for a change of manager.

"You telling me something I don’t know. I’m oblivious to that,” Lambert said when asked about the calls. "The number of letters you get with people saying ‘stick with it, stick with it’ is incredible as well. That never gets highlighted because nobody ever says anything. You get a lot of support on that side of it but that’s fine.

"All the fans want is for the team is to be successful. They’ve had too many years here. Forty years ago was an incredible time here, the great, great players here, then the promotion team and all that. Great times.

"It’s been too long that this club hasn’t had anything to celebrate really. It’s not had anything for a long, long time.

"I can understand how it’s been for supporters and if things don’t go their way the first thing they’ll go for is the manager, that’s the first thing they’ll always go for, that always happens.

"We just hope that we can give them something. We have to give them something so they can say ‘OK, that was a successful time’ we have to get that that feeling where they say ‘OK, let’s see how it goes’.

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