By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions. We in turn value your personal details in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Please log in or register. Registered visitors get fewer ads.
My take (even though I also live in Australia) is a combination of two things:
1) Our success was built on building from the back and moving the ball through the opposition, but we always struggled to beat teams who employ a low block. Now we're the big fish in the Championship, teams are sitting back much more than they used to. We saw this in the League One promotion season. Even when we were scoring goals for fun when teams used the low block we found it really hard to break them down. We often managed to because of the relative quality of our team, but it was hard going. We still don't appear to have a Plan B and the relative quality gap is much less than League 1.
2) That secret sauce momentum. We've forgotten how to dominate teams and how to win. Four league wins in 15 months is a huge monkey on our back. Win one and I think things could turn really quickly.
Having taken a bit of time to get over the Chaplin departure and reflecting on the window as a whole I think it has the potential to be a great step towards Town becoming a sustainable lower to mid-level Premier League side - but the timing of our ins and outs leaves a lot to be desired. I'll try to be brief.
The inconvenient truth is that our squad last year was not good enough for the Premier League, whether that's the players who had been with us through the promotions or many of the new signings we made last year. Only Delap and O'Shea demonstrated they were good enough for the Premier League - and in patches Axel as well. As much as we loved Omari, it's difficult to pinpoint any times where he tore the game apart.
Sure, there were little cameos over the year from Broadhead, Chaplin and Hirst - but none of them really made a case that they were of the standard and that's been proven by the lack of interest in them from Premier League clubs. Even Davis, for me our player of the season for each of the two previous years was horribly exposed last season.
So, if we're trying to become an established Premier League side then it's no surprise that there's been a wholesale clear out. It stings a lot (I had to unfollow Chappers on social media because it hurt too much to see him with the wrong badge on his blue shirt), but ripping off the band aid is usually the right thing to do.
We also complained that we hadn't shopped overseas last year - so here we are with multiple foreign players, who we hope will be an improvement, but we don't know because all we've got are two-minute highlight reels to go off.
So on face value this squad is a good evolution from last season and a huge upgrade on the 2023/24 squad.
The big issue though, is we've brought the squad together too late. Just like last year, we kicked off the first game of the season with a team that isn't going to be our first team for the season and we're playing catch up now during the international breaks to try and build cohesion, patterns of play and our identity.
The other issue with the timing is that magic sauce called momentum - we carried a great atmosphere and positivity into last weekend off the back of the four new signings, but we finish the window letting loved players out the door to get down to the 25-man squad limit.
And now we're faced with the good old 'time to gel' period where McKenna needs to find a settled starting XI, and in doing so may end up pi$$ing off some players who thought they were going to be starters but might find themselves as impact subs - at a guess I would say Hirst, Nunez, McAteer, Szmodics, Philogene/Clarke and Johnson could all end up playing a lot less minutes than they expected.
Thank goodness our first game after the break is the Norwich of the North - a team bereft of confidence who are unlikely to deploy a low block. 2-3 wins through September and then a home derby to hopefully get the crowd on board. Win that and we'll all look back at this end to the window as a distant memory.
There's no doubt that Woolfy is the best ball playing centre half and Burgess was hugely underrated in this area as well. However, both had the weakness of being relatively slow and this is the attribute that Mckenna clearly rates more highly which is why O'Shea and Greaves are/were ahead in the pecking order.
Given Mckenna likes the pivot to go through the Number 5 I can see what a ball playing CB isn't the priority - I just wish O'Shea (especially) recognised this and reduced the number of Hollywood passes he attempts.
I'll accept on face value that you're a Town fan and have been for many years - but jesus wept that is probably the worst take amongst hundreds of s**t takes this summer.
Let's the clear about one thing - there are probably only about a dozen employees in Ipswich's history that our part of our soul - Cobbolds, Pat Godbold, Ramsay, Robson, Crawford, Wark, Beattie, Mills, Butcher, Stockwell, Burley; and that's about it.
It's the thousands and thousands of Town fans across the globe - those fans (and I'm including you despite the ridiculousness of your original post) are our lifeblood, our DNA, our SOUL - whether that's a wet midweek night in Birmingham, getting up at 3am down under to watch the stream because you have to watch it in real time, or the 29,000+ who turned up at Portman Rd less than five days ago.
Love Morsy and sad to see him move on, but by the sounds of his contract offer he would have been mad to turn it down. How on earth did you cope when players like Wark, Butcher and Mills moved on when the Robson team was being dismantled??!!
Love The Chameleons and this intro was what got me into them over 30 years ago. For me though, it's one of their weakest choruses which really doesn't do justice to the first two minutes.
1: Yokkos.252 - three Japanese guys wearing latex masks inflicting various degrees of (cartoon) violence on each other in a range of silly tasks. [Now I type that out it sounds so much dodgier than it is in reality]
2: Jelle's Marble Run - into season 7 or 8 now - I'm a committed O'Rangers fan to the point that when they didn't qualify for the finals in 2024 I didn't watch the finals and when they won Marbula One in late 2023 I was celebrating in a similar way to when Town beat Huddersfield a few months later!! [not sure how I ended up having such an attachment to one group of coloured marbles over another]
3: Ron Chopper Golf - the biggest YouTube Golfer down here in Australia. It started out as a parody of other YouTube golfers (Ron Chopper is a character created by a golf club pro here in Perth - Matt Heath) but then he became a bit more serious once his subscribers started to increase. Before his channel really took off about 18 months ago Matt was still giving lessons and I had 3-4 sessions with him - great guy and not that dissimilar to his Ron character.
Also do a lot of YouTube quizzes with my wife and kids (Quiz Master Dale and Quizzes 4 You - both UK based are our go tos).
Like someone else on here we had a phase of nightly watching ear wax extractions and pimple popping a few years ago - but it's become very samey (you've seen a few and you've seen them all).
I desperately want Clarke to be a success but today like last week, I thought he did nothing. Philogene at least put himself about and got involved but he looked rusty, perhaps to be expected after not playing a competitive match for several months..
To start with I thought it was brilliant, I even grew to like the Joe Wilkinson bits (although I prefer it when he's a contestant) - but it's never been able to recover from the loss of Sean Lock, and the absence of Jon Richardson from at least half of the episodes now has meant there have been some absolutely shockers of episodes - despite the best efforts from some of the guest captains.
Carrot in a box is and will always be the highlight.
I was the original BasingstokeBlue on here back in 1999-2001, then became FleetBlue for a couple of years before settling on my current user name around 2004. My first house was one of the new builds by the old Park Prewitt Hospital on the road to Newbury.
About 8-9 hours a day. Only break away from the screen is daily leadership meetings.
Used to be about 11-12 hours a day in my old job on average. More so since Covid because I used to do a lot more meetings in person whereas virtually all are on Teams now.
Have been pretty much in front of a computer for at least 4-5 hours a day, five days a week since 1996.
The only reason a back five of Palmer, Johnson, O'Shea, Greaves and Davis isn't the filthiest thing you'll see on paper next year is because going forward we have the opportunity to pick four from Hutchinson, J Clarke, Philogene, Szmodics, Hirst, Chaplin, Broadhead and Ogbene (plus the bonus of Burns to be back in 2026).
Even if Hutchinson leaves, that is ridiculous for Championship level.
Which means the only surprise can come from either Humphreys or Taylor stepping up and bossing midfield (probably unlikely) or whatever new signings we make between now and deadline day.
It's amazing how a couple of years makes such a difference in childhood. Songs From the Big Chair was probably the 3rd/4th album I ever owned as a 9/10 year old and I loved it, but it was another 6-7 years before I even knew about The Hurting let alone heard any of the songs on it.
I would have been 6/7 years old when TFF first broke onto the scene and I had no awareness of them at all. I look at Top 40 charts from the early 80s and probably recognise 3-4 songs, but give me a Top 40 from 1985-1991 and I could probably sing along to 25-30 of the songs.
For what it's worth, The Hurting is a better album, although Shout and Head Over Heels are my two favourite TFF songs.
As for my first album, probably War of the Worlds like a couple of others on here or Human Racing by Nik Kershaw.
I probably agree with 50-60% of yours, another 20% are justifiable but wouldn’t be in my 25, but my god there are a small number of awful choices in that list.
Smith, Jackson, Sears, Edwards, Burns and Broadhead shouldn’t be anywhere near this list when you have the likes of Legwinski, McGoldrick, Waghorn, MacAuley, Kelvin Davis, Bart and Kuqi missing.
We would have been promoted back to the Premier League in 04/05 if Royle had any tactical savvy and a more mobile defender than De Vos - who had the turning circle of a bus.
Fourth in Division 1 (top league) having just played our last game of the season. Just behind Derby but a long way back from Leeds and Liverpool in 1st and 2nd.
Still a couple of games left to play for some of the mid-table teams (no same time kick-offs back in the day), but no one can overtake us.
Delightfully, the bottom two were Norwich (bottom) and Man Utd, who were both relegated alongside Southampton.
Carlisle are about to be promoted to Div One, Wrexham just missed out on promotion to Div Two, Bournemouth and Brighton are in Div Three and Brentford in Div Four.
Because he's already said where he sees his future next season:
McKenna: My Full Focus is on Town24th Apr 2025 16:18 Town boss Kieran McKenna has reaffirmed his intention to remain with the Blues despite relegation from the Premier League appearing certain to be confirmed this weekend at Newcastle.19
He even said he's not going to comment on it every week. Despite how the season panned out he is going to be linked with every mid-lower table opportunity - we can't reasonably expect him to comment on every link in the media or every time he's installed as bookie's favourite. No other manager/coach in sport does this and he would make himself a laughing stock if he formally denied every rumour.
The other thing to remember is he is under a very large contract, and we would need to give him permission to speak to another club (like we did with Delap) - so how about we just save our hand wringing for the day if/when it's announced by Ashton that we've given McKenna permission to speak to another club.
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
