First-team coach Matt Gill says being on the end of flak is part and parcel of the football industry.
Manager Paul Lambert, whose relationship with the press has become increasingly frosty of late and with TWTD’s Phil Ham having been banned from press conferences since October, opted out of this morning's Zoom meeting with the media with coach Gill, 40, sitting in. Assistant manager Stuart Taylor has deputised on a number of other occasions recently.
Fans’ calls for a change of manager of Portman Road have become ever louder as the Blues have repeated last season’s slip from the top of League One into mid-table and Town now sit 11th, the position they ended the curtailed 2019/20 campaign when it was settled on points per game.
Asked how Lambert was handling the pressure, Gill said: "Fine, no change in the manager, in the gaffer. I think we’re all really, really looking forward to trying to turn this blip around and moving forward with some positive results.”
Does the flak Lambert’s been getting put him off becoming a manager himself? Gill, who joined the Blues along with his former Norwich manager from Carrow Road where he was U23s coach in October 2018, having previously stated that he has ambitions of becoming a boss of his own club at some point.
"Nobody likes getting flak, do they?” he reflected. "Obviously, I came off of Twitter when I made this move to this club because of the flak I was getting at the time.
"So I think it’s part and parcel of the industry and I think that everybody comes to work trying to do the best they possibly can.”
Town picked up 16 points from their first six matches, five wins and a draw, but have accrued merely 20 from the following 17.
Gill knows that the Blues must get back to that early-season form if they’re to stand any chance of being in the promotion shake-up come May.
"That’s right,” he admitted. "What I would say is that having 23 games left is a real opportunity to get that first half of the season form back, I think that’s going to be vital.
"Momentum can go one way or the other and now it’s down to us to make sure the momentum is positive and we’ll put a run together.”