| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One 08:37 - Oct 3 with 2310 views | IpsRich |
Two managers in a row now have seemingly tried exactly the same strategy to try and succeed in League One, and our divisional rivals continue to find us out.
That is to:
1) Adopt a passing style of football, regardless of the opponent.
2) Sign better players than everyone else to try and overawe them.
This strategy might work if you're a master tactician, and/or have excellent coaching staff, and/or can build something with the same players over the course of a few seasons (e.g. MK Dons). But its not a guarantee of success either.
For two seasons prior to Paul Cook's arrival that strategy failed under Lambert - who thought we were Man City in the third tier. It has also failed in a similar fashion for Sunderland, Portsmouth and Charlton, and potentially come the end of the season Sheffield Wednesday (though Darren Moore knows better from his time at Doncaster).
What's more, the corporate memory which might have guided Paul Cook (who frankly should know better) and our new owners to take the division more seriously was rapidly dispensed with during the spring and summer. The opportunity to bring in coaching staff who could prepare our players for the battle that is League One has also been rejected.
Games like Accrington, played in conditions like Saturday, will not go the way we want whilst we focus on sticking as many top class attacking players in our XI and try and pass around our opponent. It is human nature for a diminutive attacking player up against 6 foot plus midfielders and defenders, being fouled with only 1/5 being awarded by lousy officials, perhaps in the pouring rain or on a crap pitch, to go into their shell. I'm sure most of us have said one of the following in the past two years - 'we're too nice', 'we need to be more physical', or 'we lack the right characters'?
So for me, League One demands a different type of recruitment. It also requires a tactical plan b, especially away from home.
The fact that Pauls Lambert and Cook persist with the same strategy, maybe occasionally tinkering with the team shape, is either a sign of insanity or hubris. Until Cook recognises this, I fear we may end up meandering into the winter, remaining bottom half. Under the previous owner that may have illicited a programme note urging us for patience or to be 'careful what we wish for'. For Gamechanger, he'll surely be gone - along with our chances of making something of yet another season down in the third tier and back to square one with a new coach/manager.
To me its not difficult to form a secondary tactic which is more direct, and is more physical. We have some players who could easily do it - Edmundson, Burgess, Nsiala, Donacien, (Coulson?), Morsy, Norwood, Bonne - though obviously not enough. The rest would need...coaching!
Cook is surely not going to be given another season to get his current approach right if we're bottom half at christmas. Its incumbent upon him to make his passing game work fast (maybe it will?) or to try and think differently.
I saw another post about us lauding our history and status over other clubs as a factor - being over-confident. Maybe it is, but it should also serve to motivate us. If only the playing staff and coaching staff felt as acutely the embarrassment us supporters feel about being in this division. The bigger embarrassment is how we've gone about trying to escape it (the right way!) - and maybe it'll end up leading to another managerial departure and continuing our stay even longer.
I hope I'm wrong. [Post edited 3 Oct 2021 8:40]
|  |
| |  |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 08:42 - Oct 3 with 2251 views | BlueandAllWhite |
More direct? Half our midfield need neck work from watching the ball sail over their heads for 70 out of 90 minutes last night. |  | | |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 08:43 - Oct 3 with 2240 views | IpsRich |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 08:42 - Oct 3 by BlueandAllWhite |
More direct? Half our midfield need neck work from watching the ball sail over their heads for 70 out of 90 minutes last night. |
There's a big difference between pumping the ball long in hope, and going direct with a purpose. [Post edited 3 Oct 2021 8:46]
| |
| |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 14:17 - Oct 3 with 1903 views | AlanG296 |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 08:42 - Oct 3 by BlueandAllWhite |
More direct? Half our midfield need neck work from watching the ball sail over their heads for 70 out of 90 minutes last night. |
What were they doing last night? [Post edited 3 Oct 2021 14:18]
| | | |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 17:48 - Oct 3 with 1719 views | Chrisd |
The bottomline is we have no entitlement to win any game, regardless of our past. Teams in L1 aren’t just going to give us the 3 points because we won an FA Cup and UEFA Cup a lifetime ago and why should they? The fact is we’ve been bullied in our defeats this season, outthought and outfought. We need to overcome this ‘we’re Ipswich Town’ nonsense and put our own mark in the sand, compete with these sides and give them nothing. I know this might come as a shock to some, but we are a L1 club too, but we are too much of a soft touch in comparison to some of the more physical sides. That 2nd half display was typically us and we eventually buckled. If we compete first, then our quality should shine through in the end. Yesterday, was never conducive for good football, but if you can’t win the game don’t lose it, but that’s something we seem incapable of doing at the moment. [Post edited 3 Oct 2021 18:26]
| |
| |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 18:02 - Oct 3 with 1667 views | ElephantintheRoom |
It's not contempt for League One aka the third division is it so much as a delusional belief that Town belong at a higher level? A lot of people were looking forward to new teams after years of tedium and stagnation
A number of self annointed 'big clubs' have suffered the same fate as Town - and some have sunk a lot lower - Portsmouth and Luton spring to mind. The likes of Leeds, Sheff U, Sunderland have struggled to get out of this division - whilst the likes of Rotherham and Peterborough seem to do it as a matter of routine.
Town's problems have really set in once the sould of the club was thrown away and the club was gifted to an offshore asset stripper. And now its a franchise expected to make money for an Arizona pension fund - neither option looks the easiest pathway back to the promised land.
But as Sheff U and Leeds showed -and maybe Coventry area ray of hope too - things can change pretty quickly - for largely differing reasons | |
| |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 19:36 - Oct 3 with 1544 views | Steve_M |
I think that might be a reasonable characterisation of our first season after relegation but not sure that applies to PL last season given that we beat the lesser sides fairly regularly (under Lambert at least) and struggled against the better ones.
Certainly, we’re trying to do too much in games like yesterday which means we end up achieving very little as in the second half.
As much as anything else, I think part of our problem is that we haven’t got the three behind the striker playing effectively yet. Yes, it was good against Doncaster but Fraser and Celina drfit in and out of games all the time, Chaplin has done similar when I’ve seen him too so we end up with far less to the team than we should have.
Even yesterday though, we dealt with the attritional side of the game pretty well in the first half. It wasn’t pretty but it never was going to be. And yet, in the second half we couldn’t deal with the physical side at all, couldn’t get the ball down and subsided very meekly. That contrast between the halves is as much of a problem as the style of play IMO.
We made too many changes last Summer, as we’ve discussed before that didn’t go well when the club tried it previously. I think Cook got a lot of leeway because of the takeover and Ashton not being in place for long enough but it was always a risky strategy, especially for Cook himself given the poor job he did last season.
It’s a mess but I don’t think the season is irredeemable just yet. It might be soon though, which suggests the next month will be important. It really shouldn’t have come to this should it? |  |
| |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 20:12 - Oct 3 with 1454 views | patrickswell |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 18:02 - Oct 3 by ElephantintheRoom |
It's not contempt for League One aka the third division is it so much as a delusional belief that Town belong at a higher level? A lot of people were looking forward to new teams after years of tedium and stagnation
A number of self annointed 'big clubs' have suffered the same fate as Town - and some have sunk a lot lower - Portsmouth and Luton spring to mind. The likes of Leeds, Sheff U, Sunderland have struggled to get out of this division - whilst the likes of Rotherham and Peterborough seem to do it as a matter of routine.
Town's problems have really set in once the sould of the club was thrown away and the club was gifted to an offshore asset stripper. And now its a franchise expected to make money for an Arizona pension fund - neither option looks the easiest pathway back to the promised land.
But as Sheff U and Leeds showed -and maybe Coventry area ray of hope too - things can change pretty quickly - for largely differing reasons |
If you think that the problems which have led to Town sitting where they currently are started with the GameChanger takeover, then you really haven't been paying attention. |  | | |
| MK Dons, Wigan, Plymouth… etc on 20:45 - Oct 3 with 1397 views | unstableblue |
Are teams adopting a passing style of football, regardless of the opponent, and doing very nicely thank you
Saturday was a complete lack of fight and energy, end of
Coventry passed their way out of this league, as did Blackpool |  |
| |
Login to get fewer ads
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 20:55 - Oct 3 with 1364 views | Burns7 |
People forget that when City ended up in the third tier, they'd last played top flight football about 2 years before, not nearly 20 when we came down. Clubs like City also played more than 5 seasons in the top flight in the previous 30 years before going down, unlike us. We are exactly where we should be given how badly the club was run. Evans is the man responsible for the mess. |  | | |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 22:36 - Oct 3 with 1261 views | Hullblue |
I’ve seen this argument from a few different people now and I’ve got to say I don’t see the logic in it.
Why would we be better than Accrington are at their own game? If it comes down to a physical battle they’re going to win - and when the ball is in the air the quality of the players is irrelevant- so we’d be taking away our own advantages. Our job is to make it a football match.
You’re right that it’s human nature for diminutive players to go into their shell when kicked, but it’s also human nature to stand up against bullies. We obviously chose the former yesterday - and personally I think that’s because we weren’t mentally prepared for it. Has Celina ever been to Accrington before? Doubt it. Last October he came on as sub away at PSG - so yesterday was bound to be a culture shock. It seems to be that the management team didn’t do a good enough job of preparing us, tactically or mentally, to impose our game on them. |  |
| |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 23:10 - Oct 3 with 1192 views | BondiBlue |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 22:36 - Oct 3 by Hullblue |
I’ve seen this argument from a few different people now and I’ve got to say I don’t see the logic in it.
Why would we be better than Accrington are at their own game? If it comes down to a physical battle they’re going to win - and when the ball is in the air the quality of the players is irrelevant- so we’d be taking away our own advantages. Our job is to make it a football match.
You’re right that it’s human nature for diminutive players to go into their shell when kicked, but it’s also human nature to stand up against bullies. We obviously chose the former yesterday - and personally I think that’s because we weren’t mentally prepared for it. Has Celina ever been to Accrington before? Doubt it. Last October he came on as sub away at PSG - so yesterday was bound to be a culture shock. It seems to be that the management team didn’t do a good enough job of preparing us, tactically or mentally, to impose our game on them. |
Accrington's game was more about the very high press than long balls. Their defensive line was high a result, meaning plenty of space in behind (e.g. bonne's goal). Push the ten or both wingers right up and look for balls in behind to force them backwards. Either you'll score on tbe counter or they'll have to abandon the high press OR their defence dropping back and forwards still pressing will create space in midfield, which our ball-players could exploit. | |
| |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 23:54 - Oct 3 with 1124 views | timothyeo |
We don't even play great attacking football. We have our moments but so do other more agricultural teams in this league.
With the players we have we should be looking special in this league. We should be breaking records for points and goals. Instead we're closer to the bottom 3. | | | |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 09:40 - Oct 4 with 840 views | Hullblue |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 23:10 - Oct 3 by BondiBlue |
Accrington's game was more about the very high press than long balls. Their defensive line was high a result, meaning plenty of space in behind (e.g. bonne's goal). Push the ten or both wingers right up and look for balls in behind to force them backwards. Either you'll score on tbe counter or they'll have to abandon the high press OR their defence dropping back and forwards still pressing will create space in midfield, which our ball-players could exploit. |
That’s more of a coherent plan than the OP’s and I don’t think anyone would be averse to us playing it in behind every now and then, as long as it’s part of a plan to ultimately control the game.
OP seemed to me to be saying we should become more like Accrington to beat Accrington. | |
| |
| Ipswich Town and our contempt for League One on 10:05 - Oct 4 with 789 views | tractorshark |
I would say there is an element of arrogance about our players and certainly some of the fans regarding League One.
Maybe rightly so. But the old adage about teams raising their game against ‘big clubs’ is probably playing a part here as well.
I’m sure Accrington will be posting Morsy’s comments on the dressing room wall when they come to Portman Road.
But cream will eventually rise to the top. Better players will beat weaker players more often than not, so we do have that to cling to.
It has taken Sunderland a year longer than us in this division to start looking like the club they should be and while they got a tonking at Portsmouth, I suspect they will go up this season. | | | |
| |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
