What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? 16:03 - Aug 22 with 5262 views | unstableblue | Obviously Town were playing at a higher level in the Championship, there are players in that picture such as Skuse and Webster who were undoubted quality, Mick was getting us to over perform on his budget... but at what cost? entertainment, and attacking excitement were leaving Portman Road, much like the fans - pragmatism reigned. I don't look back to the 16/17 season and think 'What. A. Team'. I think about leaving Portman Road being hugely underwhelmed. As did the 1000s who were no longer attending. Its funny how many of our fans look back on the Mick years with such rose tinted spectacles, play-off season aside. We were the third lowest scorers in the league that season. Our crowds were 15k or 16k often.. we got low crowds even for Forest and QPR. Average was down 16,980 (akin to our current season ticket sales alone), down from 18,989 in the play-off season, and crashing to 16,272 the season that followed. We were out thought and outplayed technically throughout the season (see McKenna recent interview if you want an explanation of technical) This season our average is 24,866!! There is a connection to players (Chaplin, Edmundson, Donacien, Burns, Morsy) and manager like I cannot remember - do you feel as connected to Knudsen as you do Leigh? And critically the football on display is exciting and entertaining. We have a modern manager, who communicates to us about games at another level. This all becomes a mute point if we don't get promoted, and show quality in the Championship, but for me this feels like a team to be really proud of: Rather than lauding the gripes of disgruntled former players and harking back to what was a poor time in the overall dark Evans years. |  |
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What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 08:48 - Aug 23 with 766 views | PioneerBlue | Not What. A. Team. The club was entering a death spiral the like this generation hasn’t seen. |  |
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What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 08:48 - Aug 23 with 763 views | pointofblue |
What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 08:42 - Aug 23 by Mullet | The idea that Cook was never going to get us up just highlights what an awful job he did here then doesn't it? There was no excuse to not make the playoffs, let alone a realistic chance of promotion. All this thread does is highlight how good Mick was and how the club imploded by removing him. It's so odd it took the removal of Evans, the massive investment and so many failures to really underline it and still be revised or ignored. The lack of revulsion at what came after and hypocrisy with it, speaks volumes doesn't it? Much like the criticism of those superior players but not the current lot. It's almost like the puritanism wasn't sincere. What makes this season so enjoyable is the potential of getting back up and then mounting another challenge so we're not here again. |
The thing I can’t get my head around is Cook getting more support than McCarthy from many, considering how their respective careers panned out here. And can anyone really say they didn’t expect the play offs in 20/21 when the former came in considering our mini run under Gill had got us so close? He wrecked that season, was like a kid in a sweet shop with signings without having a clue how to fit them into a system, and promptly wrecked 21/22 too. |  |
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What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 08:48 - Aug 23 with 763 views | itfcjoe |
What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 08:20 - Aug 23 by Churchman | I think you make some interesting points, as always, particularly in the relationship of finance to achievement. There is little doubt MM defied gravity, but was his way they only way to do it? If you look at what followed and preceded it you’d say yes, but then Keane, Jewell, Lambert, Hurst didn’t know a team from a teapot. However, the oft forgotten Magilton achieved similar results to MM with a team far more attractive to watch with poor funding compared to many in the Championship. Jim was no manager of the year, but he got a raw deal here, not least due to Evans. No wonder he’s never been back. Royle worked miracles with players being sold left right and centre, but JR was good. Both Royle’s and Magilton’s teams were far better to watch than Mick’s, but MM always had his own way of playing. I loved the togetherness of his players 2012-2015. It was pragmatic but always difficult to watch. We played nicely in too few few games, but I thought when Bishop emerged we might have a football team developing. The key though to 2014/15 was Murphy who has the season of his life. Overall, we somehow scrambled through seasons and for me apart from watching McGoldrick, it was one of the least enjoyable periods of watching us. As for the verge of the play offs when Cook arrived, in points terms we were, not least due to a good start, but there was more chance of me making Pope than us going up that season. Where I totally agree with you is that while we look promising, we do need to wait until this team has achieved something before lauding them too much. It’s looking promising though! [Post edited 23 Aug 2022 8:28]
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I guess we can only look at the times for what they were, Jim did fantastic in that first season but when we had a bit of money to spend went backwards and I think some of the football in his last season was as dull as anything we saw under Mick, especially away from home where we barely had a shot too often and drifted down the table - and when Evans came in and invested £12m it was seen as enough to get us up and made us title favourites.....5 years later there were a couple of clubs each season paying that fee for one player and giving them £50k a week! Injuries killed us under Mick, as you mention Bishop, as well as McGoldrick, but Fraser missed literally 2/3rds of the season in his loan and we finished 7th, Huws and Adeyemi never got going, and too many more to name - would Mick have worked with an Andy Rolls in a performance squad.....probably reluctantly.....but if we had anything like the investment we do now in sports science and the like we'd have surely kept some of these longer term guys fit? I was very excited for Cook, but his record at the end of the season is largely ignored - we'd just picked up 10 points from 4 games against top 10 sides by going direct, getting 2 strikers on the pitch and just trying to overpower teams.....it wasn't pretty at times and against Accrington we struggled to a win - but I find it hard to believe that had we carried on like that we'd have got enough points when you see how easy our run in was. It's why I'm reticent to give Cook credit for transfer window etc because he cost us 2 shots at promotion in his tenure. Interesting points made re social media and current players, but there are some you can tell are genuinely good guys, with good community focus. Some it may be that they have young families and do less, but George Edmundson and Connor Chaplin are really top guys and taken club and area to their heart already - I've spoken to both at youth matches that they had no need or reason to attend. In one game Chaplin and his agent etc left at half time and Edmundson stayed to watch the game on his own and just chatted away with me. I can count on fingers of one hand players I've seen do this previously as a regular youth watcher - and it's only silly little things but these things matter |  |
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What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 08:59 - Aug 23 with 726 views | Churchman |
What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 08:42 - Aug 23 by Mullet | The idea that Cook was never going to get us up just highlights what an awful job he did here then doesn't it? There was no excuse to not make the playoffs, let alone a realistic chance of promotion. All this thread does is highlight how good Mick was and how the club imploded by removing him. It's so odd it took the removal of Evans, the massive investment and so many failures to really underline it and still be revised or ignored. The lack of revulsion at what came after and hypocrisy with it, speaks volumes doesn't it? Much like the criticism of those superior players but not the current lot. It's almost like the puritanism wasn't sincere. What makes this season so enjoyable is the potential of getting back up and then mounting another challenge so we're not here again. |
Yes, Mick did a good job even if I didn’t like the way his team played. He annoyed the heck of me in a number of ways too but he’s undeniably a good manager. Few could have rescued us as he did in his first season. It for me highlighted too that Magilton was better than he was given credit for at the time and after. So was Royle. Cook’s approach with the players when he arrived blew up in his face, clearly. He couldn’t have done worse with them if he’d planned it. Were they good enough anyway? I don’t think so. Was the squad over sized, chaotic and dysfunctional? Joe knows far better than me, but from the outside looking in it appears so. |  | |  |
What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 09:04 - Aug 23 with 698 views | itfcjoe |
What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 08:59 - Aug 23 by Churchman | Yes, Mick did a good job even if I didn’t like the way his team played. He annoyed the heck of me in a number of ways too but he’s undeniably a good manager. Few could have rescued us as he did in his first season. It for me highlighted too that Magilton was better than he was given credit for at the time and after. So was Royle. Cook’s approach with the players when he arrived blew up in his face, clearly. He couldn’t have done worse with them if he’d planned it. Were they good enough anyway? I don’t think so. Was the squad over sized, chaotic and dysfunctional? Joe knows far better than me, but from the outside looking in it appears so. |
The squad was oversized in January and we added 4 more players to it - Thomas, Matheson, Harrop and Parrott and got less than zero out of 3 of them! Was totally chaotic like you said, think it was manageable as Matt Gill and Jimmy Walker had managed to do so but just involved binning a few people off to train with 23s to get numbers down which both Gill and subsequently Cook did |  |
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What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 09:56 - Aug 23 with 645 views | timothyeo | I certainly miss not being a pushover, even against the better sides at Championship level. I much preferred that to finishing midtable in the third tier, but each to their own as plenty thought they "got their Ipswich back" when an ex budgie came in to manage us, so god knows. |  | |  |
What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 10:12 - Aug 23 with 630 views | itfcsuth | It feels far more exciting and enjoyable to be a Town fan right now, there genuinely is a feel good factor around the club regarding what the future holds. There also seems to be a real connection between fans, players, management and ownership. No doubt that team did well given the constraints from the top, but it wasn't enjoyable to be a Town supporter back then. Fans just want to see a vision for the future, that the club has a plan in place to grow and progress, unfortunately that wasn't there under Evans, of no fault to these players and MM. |  | |  |
Budgie. (n/t) on 10:33 - Aug 23 with 605 views | Bloots |
What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 09:56 - Aug 23 by timothyeo | I certainly miss not being a pushover, even against the better sides at Championship level. I much preferred that to finishing midtable in the third tier, but each to their own as plenty thought they "got their Ipswich back" when an ex budgie came in to manage us, so god knows. |
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What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 10:49 - Aug 23 with 587 views | Churchman |
What do people make of this Tweet lauding our 2016 side?? on 09:56 - Aug 23 by timothyeo | I certainly miss not being a pushover, even against the better sides at Championship level. I much preferred that to finishing midtable in the third tier, but each to their own as plenty thought they "got their Ipswich back" when an ex budgie came in to manage us, so god knows. |
Ahhh, those dewy eyed happy memories of Skuse, Hyam and Douglas dominating the midfield. Not. Who can forget the Newcastle fan filming Douglas as he slowly walked about the pitch during the 3-0 hiding up there. Then of course there was the Boxing Day joy of Fulham wiping the floor with us 2-0, or Derby doing the same a month later. Scraped draws and squeaky wins with the odd decent one elevated us to nosebleed 16th. Ahhh those heady memories. Horrible kit too. Gates plummeted because we were mostly awful to watch and desperately clinging on due to Mick’s astute punts. There was no future in it. Hearing Douglas was a ‘proper bloke’ after the game didn’t cut it either. I’m picking on him a bit which is a little unfair, but he summed up all that was wrong in that period for me. People bring up that worse was to follow. Yep, but that was because Evans employed cretins while starving the club of what it needed. It doesn’t excuse what I witnessed before McCarthy left. I felt at the time we should expect better than anti-football 16th, just as I feel we are way better as a club than a garbage division like L1. We are where we are, but there’s nothing wrong with aspiration then or now. [Post edited 23 Aug 2022 11:05]
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