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Reply | Paul Hurst - Scunthorpe manager (n/t)
at 00:15 11 May 2019
Spot on assessment.
From what he has said about his time here, he has been pretty honest and admitted he made a lot of errors here and deserved to go. Whilst his choice of signings was clearly very poor, his comments regarding going into the season without his own signings/ those signings playing catch up on a fitness level when they arrived is clearly a fundamental Evans flaw almost every summer. |
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Reply | Norwich City promoted on a budget
at 22:01 30 Apr 2019
I think the reality is:
- They got promoted, earned the right to the financial benefits that went with it, but spent most of it really poorly which led to them being lumbered with players like Olivera training with the youth team for arguing with the manager on the pitch and the likes of Martin/ Naismith/ Jerome long past their best sitting on comfortable contracts.
- Club needed to completely reset its strategy as it spent all its parachute money to fund a really poor recruitment drive during during their first season after relegation.
Basically, their need to cut their cloth after the loss of parachute money forced them to adapt a new recruitment drive which has paid off massively. [Post edited 30 Apr 22:03]
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Reply | Being like the Blunts
at 15:45 28 Apr 2019
I fail to see where I have compared us to them in any of the above. I merely explained that their Prem money makes it impossible to be a like for like comparison between the two clubs, which it is. Apparently I said we shouldn't compare us to Sheff United earlier too, even though I didn't say that anywhere in any of my posts. Bizarre to say the least.
However, saying we "outdid" Norwich over the last 4 years whilst not beating them, then saying fans have been too easily accepting of relegation is pretty contradictory.
We finished above them on goal difference, largely with players that weren't even ours and pure short termism. [Post edited 28 Apr 21:20]
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Reply | Being like the Blunts
at 14:51 28 Apr 2019
It's not a contradiction 😂 They're streaks ahead of us, they're in the premier league and we are in league one.
We have never once outdid them. The closest we came to outdoing them was in 2015 and they still got the better of us in the play offs. I get what you're saying to a degree, we competed with them on a budget we had no business doing it with but we did not outdo them. I didn't dismiss it as being beyond us either, but they have been able to afford mistakes because of the extra financial security they earned themselves by having been promoted previously.
The club being in league one is a disgrace, I have not tamely accepted it either, but we are there and have to learn the lessons. I'm not wasting my time having another lengthy debate about our former former manager either. MM did well but time was definitely right for a change, we made a change but the changes have been wrong. |
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Reply | Being like the Blunts
at 14:12 28 Apr 2019
How have I contradicted myself? I wasn't saying we shouldn't compare ourselves to Sheffield United, I referred specifically to Norwich. Norwich had Prem money because they were good enough to have won promotion and been there before. They spent a large portion of that money upgrading their academy. Godfrey, Aarons and Lewis were all integral players for them this year, whilst the sales of the Murphy brothers brought in £20m that has been reinvested to pretty much fund the fees and wages for Vranjic/ Stiepermann/ Pukki/ McClean/ Buendia/ Zimmermann/ Krul. They knew exactly what they were doing when they sold Maddison.
They also develop players better than us, as proved by how they have helped transform Madison into an excellent England prospect and a bunch of foreign lower league players into a free scoring championship team. It's not a fluke. They won multiple promotions with fairly average managers in Lambert and Alex Neil, so clearly the set up behind the scenes is good too.
Sheffield United have recently been in league one, I get that, but they spent a great deal of money at it over several years to get there. I agree that promotion is top priority and poor management on and off the pitch has taken us to league one, but unfortunately we do belong there for the time being and we have to earn the right to get out of it next season. That's the reality. [Post edited 28 Apr 14:33]
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Reply | Being like the Blunts
at 13:36 28 Apr 2019
We have to stop comparing ourselves to Norwich. Off the pitch and barring last season on the pitch, they have been streaks ahead of us for years and they will continue to be for years to come.
Lets just see how next season goes before making too many bleak forecasts. Admittedly, right now we are very poor and Lambert has gotten away lightly so far but patience will ware thin if we have a disjointed pre season and poor start to next season. Worth noting that Lambert now has a worse points per game ratio than Hurst. |
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Reply | ITFC Forgotten Players
at 23:48 20 Apr 2019
Mike Salmon
Jason Brown
Paddy Kenny
Sean Friars
Guillermo Graaven
Paolo Vernazza
Michael Clegg
Adam Proudlock
Samassi Abou
Mark Burchill
Cheikh Korouma
Simon Walton
Mark Kennedy
David Healy
Tony Dinning
Jay McEveley
Patrick Kisnorbo
Richard Logan
Iain Miller
Lee Bracey
Scott Mitchell
Adem Atay
Antonio Murray
Ryan Stevenson
Byron Lawrence
And last but not least, Shane O' Connor [Post edited 20 Apr 23:51]
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Thread | Simon Jordan
at 20:16 9 Apr 2019
My first reaction to the story was that this is not the first time Jordan has made digs at Evans. He had previously criticised him about the Elite Player Performance System, claiming that Town voted in favour of it rather than against it, which was a complete lie.
Reading his comments today, he's not saying anything that is particularly far from the truth. We are obviously in decline as we are about to get relegated (!) and his comments on Evans' 'involvement' are pretty relatable to many fans. As much as it annoys some people, it is natural that people outside of the club will also go back to the M word for the start of the decline. In fairness, he also refers to Ipswich being a really good club that is in decline for no particular reason other than how the club is run.
However, clearly Evans has clearly done something to annoy him at some point. It is clear that although he knows Evans, they do not speak as he has spoken out against him multiple times now. [Post edited 9 Apr 20:20]
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Reply | Mick sure did hold us together
at 01:04 10 Mar 2019
This is a topic that really requires some closure now.
The season has been an unmitigated disaster and that cannot be glossed over any other way.
However, the 3/4 months leading to Mick's departure were also pretty awful. The rot had set in long before Hurst arrived - we were just outside the play off places at Christmas, but we had fallen considerably far away from them by April and in the end we narrowly finished 12th with teams below us having caught up on us considerably (and after also setting several unwanted club records for scoring at home along the way). The 3-0 defeat to Hull in front of little over 10,000 people was arguably the grimmest Town game I have witnessed (both the game and the atmosphere around the club).
The important detail is that MM did do a very good job here, considered the resources and personnel that he had to work with. As has been proven to be the case with far better managers than Mick (as even Wenger discovered at Arsenal), all managers eventually reach a point where it gets stale and a change is required, so stale that it reaches a point where pointing to past achievements is not enough to turn it around.
The big fault lays with Evans on that one - the writing was on the wall for Mick post Lincoln but ME buried his head in the sand for 12 months and worst of all did not give him anything like adequate backing to turn it around, allowing the negative undercurrent to grow and a 'them against us' mentality that divided large sections of our support. Mick ultimately took the fall.
The club was right to make that change, but ME allowed the situation to manifest so badly that in the end he had to act. It was right for the club to make the change, but unfortunately the right changes have certainly not been made. Those changes were always going to need to be made sooner or later, when Mick left. Evans has made a pig's ear of the last 2/3 years in particular. [Post edited 10 Mar 1:18]
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Thread | Lambert
at 01:16 3 Mar 2019
Talks a good game (I'm sure I'm not the only person to notice he loves a good Borussia Dortmund reference in almost every story), but has there really been any evidence that he can manage a good game whilst he has been here?
Yesterday for example, in a game that he himself dubbed as a must win game at home against a team who were 4th from bottom in the table, why was he playing 5 defenders and 1 man up front?
Injuries have obviously left us short in the striker department, but we still had Kayden Jackson on the bench (who never made it on) and instead we opted for Quaner on his own. Not to say he has looked terrible, but I am still none the wiser as to exactly what position Quaner is really best suited to playing. He is not an out and out centre forward and would say he has looked marginally best suited to playing as a wide forward, to play him as a lone striker seemed pretty bizarre. The plan to have 5 defenders was essentially to allow Bree and Kenlock to get forward. Both were poor, and too often Nolan and Judge were drifting out wide (despite them being primarily central midfielders). With our lack of aerial presence and lack of numbers making runs into the box, why was the primary plan to get the ball out wide and stick it in the box from there? It was painfully ineffective all afternoon, with the exception of Edwards' goal which was moreso down to the persistence of Skuse and a fortunate deflection.
Most weeks have often panned out the same way. Tactics and systems have not been suited for the personel we have. Results are not too dissimilar to what Hurst's were, and I've seen little if any improvement in the football under Lambert so far (even if there has been a bit more fight shown).
The reality is that Lambert has played the fans so far and bought himself extra time through consistently good PR, rather than noticeable improvement to the football. Has there really genuinely been a great improvement? Has he really shown proof that he can manage games effectively? 2 wins in 20 suggests not.
There was never going to be a silver bullet with the squad he inherited, but that doesn't make him the right man going forward and the jury should very much still be out. I have several concerns, more so after yesterday. The set up for the game looked completely wrong from minute one.
So far, Lambert seems to have built up a good rapport with fans because:
- He got sent off at Norwich
- He wrote an open letter to fans
- Has met some fans and ex players for a coffee
- Paid for a coach load of fans for an away game
I want to like Lambert because we are winning games or at least playing good football that makes sense. So far, I've not been able to. It will be a big summer for him, without question. There will be a lot of personel changes and he will get a great opportunity to build his own team to something resembling how he wants it to look. I'm not convinced from what I've seen so far that he will get it right, but we can only hope there's a plan. |
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Reply | Kenlock
at 20:16 2 Mar 2019
100% this. |
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Reply | 3 league wins in 35, 5 league in 46
at 19:05 2 Mar 2019
Rotherham got promoted last season 12 months after they set the lowest championship points tally ever (although we could yet change that) the year before. Then again, for every Rotherham there is a Coventry or Bradford. Sheffield United took several years to crack it.
Regardless, talk of promotion and relegation next season currently is all completely irrelevant, particularly as this team will not be around next season. [Post edited 2 Mar 19:07]
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Reply | Good point made on the radio this morning
at 13:56 16 Jan 2019
I think the underlying point is that while 52% did vote to leave, there was no universal definition of how the 52% wanted the exit to be done (i.e. a hard Brexit, a soft Brexit, a no deal Brexit). Quite obviously, 52% of the British Public did not vote for a no deal Brexit. I am pretty certain that the bumper 4% majority who want to leave no longer exists. If it does, they have kept very quiet.
I find it absurd that the vote was even put to the people in the first place, with absolutely no research having been carried out into the possible consequences that may occur if Brexit took place. It meant that the will of the people, as it is referred to, was based entirely on assumptions and lies that people wanted to hear. Unfortunately, the majority lack in substance. Also, we are all talking about strongly disagreeing on the subject as though it's some kind of surprise. It was 52-48 in favour, shock horror. It is almost like there was never a sufficient enough majority that voted to leave the EU. [Post edited 16 Jan 13:57]
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Reply | IPSWICH RUE LOSING 'DULL' McCARTHY, Martin Samuel today
at 21:51 8 Jan 2019
1. Samuel is an average "sports writer" who brain farts on a regular basis to sell papers (that's pretty much his job). Whilst much of what he says here cannot be denied about his record, saying the only reason Ipswich fans wanted a change was because the football was dull is lazy unbalanced journalism. The lack of attempt to look at the other side of the coin, shows this is just a bitter old man writing an article out of spite for Ipswich, as is often the case with the national media it seems.
2. How is dull football for several seasons not a valid reason for fans to want a change? It's made out as being a petty reason, but his beloved West Ham faithful could only put up with 8 months of David Moyes.
3. The national media hate Ipswich, accept it. (McCarthy is hailed as being amazing now, but I remember all of the same people writing us off all season in 14/15 and making out we simply fluked it every week when he had his best season at us)
4. McCarthy left in the summer. Many clubs have had chances to hire him and didn't. Why is that? And why are we still only talking about this? We are where we are primarily because of our poor owner and Hurst's poor recruits, not because the time was not right for a change. As if a West Ham fan is actually preaching about how other clubs' fans are behaving irrationally and being ungrateful for what they have. I'm sure Leyton Orient fans would appreciate that 60,000 capacity Olympic Stadium they have all been moaning about moving to for years. [Post edited 8 Jan 22:02]
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Reply | How on earth did Paul Hurst even rate Jackson?
at 02:24 6 Jan 2019
100% this.
In my opinion Jackson is not being played to his strengths whatsoever whilst also playing in a very very poor beyond belief team and a higher level than he has ever played. The few goals he has scored have all been very confidently taken when in the position, but in truth he has had little by way of clear goalscoring opportunities. His goal against Millwall was completely out of nothing, so he is capable (albeit never a £2m striker).
Could be very effective if we counter attacked quickly/ got the ball forward quickly. We do neither, so he's been largely ineffective and will likely continue to be. [Post edited 6 Jan 2:29]
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Thread | 3 Best/ Worst ITFC loan signings?
at 00:21 5 Jan 2019
With all this talk of loans recently, who are your 3 best and worst loan signings?
My 3 best would be:
Dos Santos (only for a month or so, but was easily one of the most talented footballers we've had at the club for some time)
Bullard (class when we had him on loan in 2010/2011)
Reuser in 2000 (Don't need to explain)
My 3 worst would be:
Mark Fish (Hauled off at half time on his debut, and never seen again)
Zeki Fryers (Utterly horrendous performance at Huddersfield a few years back, not seen again after)
Jordan Graham (2 loans spells, impressively ineffective both times)
[Post edited 5 Jan 0:22]
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