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Reply | If your kids/grandkids ask you ‘what was special about
at 22:42 1 Sep 2025
A team of predominantly mid-table Championship level players, all playing in a system that suited them perfectly, had developed connections so they knew exactly how to play together, and had the momentum from the previous promotion which caused a fantastic level of passion, energy and desire. And all that contributed to creating a team that played in a lovely to watch style, all those nice, passing team goals; consistently won thrilling games with late comebacks, and won automatic promotion that should never have been possible. I doubt it ever gets any better than the 2023/24 season (and second half of 22/23). And it’s a season that will always have happened. |
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Reply | For me, it will be the saddest departure this summer
at 10:57 1 Sep 2025
We haven't won a league game with neither Luke Woolfenden or Cameron Burgess starting since Morecambe (H) on 24th January 2023.
I think, following the rule of 'never change a winning team', they should have started the Premier League season as the preferred CB pairing, with O'Shea and Greaves fighting to take the spots off them. Instead it was the other way around, and we didn't look better for it. |
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Reply | How the squad is shaping up
at 13:45 28 Aug 2025
Do we even know what system we are trying to fit? If it's the one that we used for the double promotion and got the best results from last season, then Burns is the system and Ogbene fits it perfectly as well. But so many new players don't fit that system that maybe we are looking for a new one so don't know which of those players are what we want. |
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Reply | Gordon sent off but wtf?
at 10:04 26 Aug 2025
Bomb squad of two along with Jon Nolan who I think complained about travelling to an away game and then not being put in the matchday squad. |
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Reply | Crowd were very quiet today
at 22:13 17 Aug 2025
I thought it might be to do with losing Morsy, Broadhead, Delap, Hutchinson, Luongo means there’s no player chants left. We need some new ones. |
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Reply | 1 win at home all season
at 23:22 16 Aug 2025
I don’t think it should be underestimated just how special the championship promotion season was. If you look at the main starting eleven from that season, only Leif Davis I would say is likely to have a career at a higher level than he was at in 2023-24. Hladky, Clarke, Woolfenden, Burgess, Morsy, Luongo, Burns, Chaplin, Broadhead and Hirst were all surely playing the best football of their careers, or close to it. Millwall, Swansea and Wrexham are not expected to be anywhere near the top two this season, and Hladky doesn’t start games at Burnley. Meanwhile some of the key subs like Harness are in league one again. This was a team that should have finished mid-table and yet they were in a system which fitted all of them so perfectly that they came second. Note that Axel Tuanzebe is a significantly better player than Harry Clarke, but we didn’t look much better when he replaced him. Omari Hutchinson is a level above Burns, Chaplin and Broadhead but again we didn’t look a lot better when he replaced any of them because they were all perfectly fitted to the system. The momentum and morale of being the newly promoted underdogs obviously having a huge effect as well. Also McKenna moulded some of these players into what he wanted for the system, specifically Morsy, Burgess and Davis but basically all of them. It was genuinely one of the great seasons and extraordinary from a manager in his first job.
The league one promotion also shouldn’t be downplayed. Getting second place with that squad wasn’t especially impressive in isolation, but the level we reached in the final stretch was so clear of anyone else and it wasn’t undeserved that McKenna got 99.6% or something of the vote as ‘very good’ that season.
I will accept that the Premier League season was poor and we should have been much closer. I feel like a lot of the new signings we made, while undoubtedly being more talented players, weren’t especially suited to the system. Leif Davis was the standout player in the championship but part of what made him so good was how the rest of the team were built around him. But Greaves couldn’t distribute to him as well as Burgess, Cajuste never covered like Luongo or even tried to as far as I could see, and Clarke seemed really to struggle with drawing defenders in like Broadhead did. As a result, Davis looked so much weaker in the Premier League.There’s no doubt that all three new signings are more talented players but none played the system as well as their predecessors. I’ve said before, if we’d stuck with their promotion players more, we would have scored a lot more points. But we still would have gone down and then had nothing to build on. This year’s team has a lot more potential if we can find a system that works for them.
One thing I wonder is if McKenna was slightly fortunate with how well the promotion team were able to adapt to how he wanted them to play, and so overestimated the new players’ ability to do the same. Palmer, O’Shea, Cajuste, Szmodics, Clarke, Philogene, even Delap all don’t seem to me to fit the same profiles as the players they were replacing but are obviously more talented. I wonder if McKenna thought they’d adapt as well as Morsy and Burgess did but has found them unable to do so? Or maybe he’s still working on a new system for them. Either way, McKenna is very inexperienced as a manager and has already done extraordinary things. Maybe he’s made mistakes with his second team because of inexperience so he’s perhaps not as good as we say right now, but will learn from the experience. While he’s not there yet, I think it is clear that in time he will probably become one of the very best managers in the game. |
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Thread | New system needed?
at 10:52 15 Aug 2025
Alex Palmer and Dara O'Shea can't play out from the back as effectively as Vaclav Hladky and Luke Woolfenden did. Jens Cajuste doesn't cover the left-back or defend like Massimo Luongo did, but instead has more skill on the ball. Jack Clarke likes to stay wider than Nathan Broadhead. Sammie Szmodics makes runs into the box like a second striker where Conor Chaplin links play better.
We clearly have a team of more talented players than we did for the last promotion. But it feels like half of them are playing in a formation that doesn't suit their skills, and instead suits the players they replaced. The big strength of the 2023-24 squad was that every player was in a role that perfectly suited their skills, complemented each other and got the absolute best out of every player. So does McKenna need to come up with a new formation/system for these new players? Any ideas what that could be? |
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Reply | the disallowed goal
at 10:05 10 Aug 2025
They often say ‘would that be given as a foul if it wasn’t in the box’ about potential penalties not awarded. You can’t really have it both ways. |
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Reply | Morsy shaped hole
at 12:15 9 Aug 2025
It's been a theme for four years that we looked markedly worse whenever Sam Morsy hasn't played. This was the only real concern of the match in my opinion, because this is the first time that Morsy's absence will now be a permanent thing.'
I remember when he first joined, Paul Cook made some comment along the lines of he would totally transform the team and the mistakes at the back that were plaguing us wouldn't happen with Morsy in the team. About the biggest hype I can remember for a player and sounded ridiculous at the time, but it has been a theme ever since that we have been poor when Morsy isn't in the time, ever since he started his Ipswich career with that 6-0 thumping of Doncaster.
The following season in league one, Morsy only missed two games, and we managed to win anyway away at Port Vale despite letting a two-goal lead slip. And the other game he missed was the final match against Fleetwood, when we had just been promoted and were on a run of 13 wins in 14 games. Honestly if there was one football result I could change, I wish we'd won this one, because 100 points 100 goals would have been nice considering how good we were that season. But considering the other ten players who had won all seven games together by an aggregate scoreline of 26-0 were all available, you would have thought we could easily beat Fleetwood even without Morsy. I'm sure that standards had slipped after the promotion but still, the title was on the line and to only draw 2-2 was disappointing.
In the championship, Morsy didn't seem like he should be the obvious standout in the team like he had been in league one, but again we only won one game out of four when he was absent, and couldn't dominate the midfield anywhere near as well as when Morsy played.
Then in the Premier League, there were calls for him to be replaced as he wasn't fast enough. But in the seven games where Morsy did not start, we scored just one point, in that backs to the wall with ten men game away at Aston Villa. It was a poor season generally but we were markedly worse without Morsy. And that is despite his replacement being former England player Kalvin Phillips.
Part of what we were missing for the last four seasons without Morsy will be his contribution as captain, and part as midfield enforcer, but either way there is a huge Morsy-shaped hole that Dara O'Shea and Azor Matusiwa need to fill quickly. On the evidence of yesterday, they haven't done it yet, but it would be silly to write anyone off after one game. |
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Reply | Philogene and Omari
at 12:14 4 Aug 2025
We got promoted with both as starting players last time, they are easily good enough to make the bench now. |
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Reply | 1-24 Prediction Competition
at 10:30 2 Aug 2025
1. Ipswich Town
2. Southampton
3. Birmingham City
4. Leicester City
5. Coventry City
6. Wrexham
7. Sheffield United
8. Swansea City
9. Norwich City
10. Millwall
11. Middlesbrough
12. West Bromwich Albion
13. Bristol City
14. Blackburn Rovers
15. Watford
16. Stoke City
17. Portsmouth
18. Queens Park Rangers
19. Derby County
20. Oxford United
21. Charlton Athletic
22. Preston North End
23. Hull City
24. Sheffield Wednesday |
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Reply | Jayden and Davis look interesting
at 20:22 25 Jul 2025
Philogene is looking so much better than he did at any point last season. Best player so far along with Davis and O’Shea who keeps playing excellent diagonal balls to them both. [Post edited 25 Jul 20:22]
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Reply | That's a strong starting 11 tonight
at 19:01 25 Jul 2025
Ogbene should be able to displace one of those at RW once he’s back to full fitness, fits the team much better. And I could see Broadhead taking the LW spot off Clarke and Philogene if he continues recent form. |
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