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We offered nothing. Literally nothing. That's as drab a Town pre-season display as I have seen in many years, considering a number of our players were seniors against a semi-pro side who were smashed Colchester at home recently it was a bit of a shock. We lacked ideas, were slow and frankly a bit off our game overall. Demoralised even, heads down, why we're clearing out some players and keeping onto others like Spence, who was fkn awful today I do not know.
Defensively still as poor as last season, and we're still messing about with Sears as a winger despite Mick being moved on. What's the long term plan here?
Yes, pre-season is worth nothing other than to gain fitness but Evans has got to back Hurst and not just loanees, we need to sort that backline out. It's been over a year since Berra left and we've sold Smith and Webster since. We need to be bringing in our own players and thinking long term, and this will cost money, not the earth, but if Evans sits on his wallet for the rest of the summer relying on small fee,s freebies and loans we could be playing with serious fire indeed.
If we are selling Bart, Waghorn and Garner then there needs to be some decent replacements brought in for a long term plan and vision and not this make-do attitude which continues to be the continuing theme of the Evans led Ipswich.
We were guff basically. Especially a few of the hyped youngsters, the Braintree players looked yards ahead and it could have been 4-5 nil.
Marcus Evans needs to give Paul Hurst 5 years in my view to build his legacy here. My greatest fear at present is that Hurst will be greatly under resourced compared to much of the Championship and that the results will not be immediate, and thus the fans will turn on him, especially if they see Sunderland under Ross or Derby under Lampard do immediately better. I hope Evans doesn’t get nervous too early and fall into the trap of many owners and sacking Hurst before the job is complete.
I’d say Hurst has the toughest job of any Ipswich manager yet, purely based on the squad he’s inherited and the limits placed on him in terms of budget. Over the past 3 years we have sold and released key players such as Mings, Murphy, Berra, Smith, Didz and have had to wait a long time for replacements to be found and even then, it’s sometimes just been patchwork in terms of loans and frees coming in. The positives are we still have Bart, Waghorn and Garner to build around but if we are being totally honest we can’t expect the likes of Chambers & Skuse to be part of a long-term plan here and with Didz and Hyam going already we may need to begin a much needed shake up of the overall squad. Hurst is going to be going into the market with one of the strictest budgets in terms of overall transfer fees and wages in the league. He’s going to have to buy very wisely and make every penny count as anything less could be our overall downfall.
I wish Hurst all the best with building a legacy here, but he needs time and patience. This is a tough job, and although some EADT writers may feel that a few additions and the squad will make playoffs, I and I am sure many others on here feel that the reality is quite different. Hurst is a unique appointment for Ipswich — Sheepshanks worked with Royle, Burley and Magilton who all had a lot of experience in the top league of this country (and internationally) having played and worked with some of the biggest clubs in the country relatively speaking for their era (Ipswich, Everton, Manchester City, Liverpool, Southampton and Sheffield Wednesday among others) and Evans’s appointments of Keane, Jewell and McCarthy had all been in that vein broadly speaking.
So this is something new for the club and we shouldn’t expect instant results, especially with Evans’s clear objective to make the club essentially pay for itself rather than start spending serious money on players and wages in the window.
Give the man time. I wish him the best of luck. He was the most popular choice by far, so let's stick with him.
Credit to Mick for seeing the madness in the situation and leaving now, shame on the owner for not dealing with it weeks ago.
We didn't expect an appointment immediately, but a sensible, interim approach where we shook Micks hand and thanked him for all he did and started looking for a new manager, and brought in someone to look after the team until seasons end. I am glad that's now the position we are in and can put the negativity of Mick staying on behind us and look forward to the future.
Again, shame on Evans for dragging this one out, as Mick would say, he blinked first... but Evans should have acted in the best interest of the club, not Mick.
It's just madness to keep him running the show when he's effectively out of the job. I understand that the club have again been caught off guard having to find a replacement but surely an interim appointment - Burley, BFJ or the like for the last few games and to help with the appointment process is a better choice than this.
Mick has gone, our anger at him is over, it's about moving forward and he doesn't need to be here any longer.
....To be frank. It hurts to think we even can't compete with some of the clubs just promoted from League One, but we were 4 points off the drop last season. At least we can hold our own a bit now.
Tommy Smith leaving has really made it sunk in for me, it looks like Mick McCarthy will be off in the summer along with the likes of Skuse, Bart, Hyam, Didz and co. most likely- we've already seen Berra and Murphy depart so a fair chunk of Mick's stalwarts have either left or are likely to go.
For all their failings these guys and Mick have been our most successful collective since Jim left nearly ten years ago and our most competitive since Joe Royle's side.
Will the new manager and his team doing any better than Mick with his "faves", the likes of Gerks, Bart, Smith, Berra, Knudsen, Ando, Skusey, Sears, Didz, Murphy, Tabb, Hyam and Bishop? Who know's. I just hope we don't look back and wonder if not backing Mick financially was Evan's biggest mistake.
I know it's just one game where we had 10 men but the rot here has been going on for far too long, the fans are actively staying home and the club is losing money hand over fist without selling players.
Just who is running the show? I whinged like a goodun' when we didn't sign a defender and thats been really costly long term - it was mad we were trying to even loan that lad from Brighton at the 11th hour knowing that his move depended on another. Any club that does business like that is clearly not being run properly. More evidence of that today with Rowe being shipped off on loan during what the club describes as a midfield "crisis" and then Ward gets injured immediately after. And we know whats coming, more free transfers and loans to plug the holes in the ship for another season.
The manager can easily be blamed, but just look at the players tonight. Their hardly fighting week in and out, call me a cynic but given we signed most of these guys from the bargain bin of football they're probably just happy to have a contract and will do enough effort wise to stay up but your never gong to challenge with a squad like ours. It seems we have signed a lot of damaged goods as well, which is likely why the better paying sides in the Championship either didn't want them or offloaded them to begin with.
Something needs to change or this club will be relegated along the lines and who knows what, what will Evans do to loss manage in League One? We wouldn't compete spending wise with some in that league now!!
I expect a few down votes for this again but it has to be said, many of us have had enough.
I can sense a change in the wind when it comes to the owner here and I think yesterday was the straw that may have broken the camels back in many respects.
Realistically he's not going to sell up is he? So the best any real protest can hope to achieve is force his hand to change the direction. He's easily the least successful Chairman this club as ever had, he's lost a ton of money and all he's doing here is loss management.
So how would we go about effecting real change?
People were conned in the summer with the ticket price decrease (although the way we treated Season Ticket holders was disgraceful) and the summer signings, which now appear to be signed for a lot less than the clubs PR implied at the time. It's clear that there was no genuine change this summer, especially when we didn't even bother t sign a replacement for Berra, or a genuine Championship quality fullback a decision that has cost us greatly.
Boycott a TV match? Show Evans what it's going to be like with a less than half empty stadium if he carries on the way he is there?
Doesn't appear so does it unless there's news I haven't heard yet? Any update?
If we are going to risk it and not bring in a new centre half then I hope Mick has looked at the errors from the Millwall game at the back that led to frankly soft goals being conceded and even the Luton match where we nearly gifted them a couple and ironed out the problems in training.
We won't get away with defending like that again on Saturday!
We've all pondered 2014/15 and how we potentially threw away automatic promotion by simply not buying 2 or 3 extra players in the winter to see us through to the end of the season. As we all know, signing Sears alone was not enough and the rest is history.
It does seems like Mick has managed to re-energise some of our long standing players and youth alongside a making couple of excellent signings in Waghorn and Garner and the whole thing has changed for us. We're playing football, we're attacking, we're full of energy and hope again, it's great to see but... I said a week or so back we needed more defenders and it's now even more desperate. The only negative from tonight is we scored 4 away from home and we were still not sure if we were going to get 3 points with just 2 minutes to play. We have a huge opportunity to build a run but we have got to be brave this time and spend some money on maybe not even just one but two centre halfs. We cannot let this one get away from us! If we do not bring in a couple of defenders, even if one is just cover then we could be throwing it all away again.
Considering they clash with both our strips this season. I rather liked the white away kit, and plus fond memories of us playing in a white strip at Selhurst Park :)
I don't think I have been this optimistic about new signings since we managed to get Pittman and Fraser in from newly promoted Bournemouth , which I assumed (wrongly) would be players that would help us at least make the Playoffs again the next season but as we know Fraser got injured, Ainsley Niles wasn't that good and for some reason we released the likes of Ando to bring in non-players like Giles Coke.. anyway that's by the by, the point is Waghorn has given me some more optimism in what I thought would be a hard thought campaign trying to avoid the drop.
The logic behind the signing is flawless, he's someone with experience at this level that's already played alongside Garner. Neither have been prolific in the Championship, and neither were top scorers at the top level in Scotland either BUT Garner seems to have come here with a new pair of legs, easily our best player during the pre-season and scoring on Saturday so confidence will be running high with him and now Waghorn is being given another chance to perform at this level with Ipswich.
My only negative from Saturday aside from seeing Dozzell in what could potentially be a career ending injury was, just who are we going to partner Garner with? Sears for me has lost it, we needed someone else and Didz you are lucky to get a full season from. Waghorn hopefully is that solution.
Well done to the manager and the club for making this one happen. Hopefully we won't lose 3-1 to Luton and the negativity won't creep back in, but this is Evans era Ipswich after all, we should expect the worse!
Anyone remember Tony Vaughan who played for us between 1994 and 1997?
He's recently been caught up in some nasty facebook drama with his wife. His wife posted that she had started a relationship with David Holdsworth this weekend (ex footballer and twin of Dean) and Vaughan had commented that he was sad to see this posted on facebook first...
Anyhow she has since claimed he hacked her account and that the status was not real, alleging he beat her and that she was beaten regularly by him but she's not gone to the police about the alleged beatings. https://www.facebook.com/donna.vaughan.336
Anyhow Tony himself has just posted this..
"It's unfortunate that some things are being played out on here,not in anyone's best interest. I have no intention for sympathy or to confuse the situation,facts are facts. There's always more than one side to any story. I won't get drawn into mudslinging and have confidence in the law of the Land in all areas that the truth will come out and all parties will act accordingly. I love & respect my family & friends so won't be name calling or throwing about slanderous allegations or statements. Going to leave it there."
Just thought that may be of interest to those who remember him being one of our best prospects of the 1990's before moving to Manchester City (for something like £1.5million, which was one hell of a fee at the time) and helping them to promotion from League One and the Championship before moving to Nottingham Forest.
It's a shame to see ex-Blues in these sorts of situations.
Is it just me that's feeling this looking at the fixtures?
Just look at the players even Brum are bringing in, who finished as badly as we did, compared to the players we are bringing in and looking at. We're oceans apart in terms of ambitious signings. We mock Harry but he does bring the names in, Stockdale for example is one hell of a signing to start with.
I very much hope I am wrong but I have that sinking feeling, and we managed to scrape it by just 4 points last season.
He is a very much overpriced at this level but he could be a potentially good signing although I fail to see him working particularly well with Sears or Didz as a partnership.
Some of those Preston goals were phenomenal but coming into our side, which is one without much creativity with a midfield much weaker than last seasons as things stand (I know, that sounds mad to even think) I don't think we can expect Garner to be Murphy mk2. We have also lost our top goalscorers from the last 3 seasons now with the departures of Pittman, Murph and Lawrence so we are really going to have to find those goals from somewhere or we could quite realistically go down.
If you read between the lines of what Lawrenson and Butcher have said about him, both having watched him play a fair bit you can see that Garners an ideal partner for the goalscoring centre forward and at his best when plays off of him and not the goalscoring centre forward himself as such. Garners ideal partner could be someone like Daryl Murphy.
Does that mean we are chasing the new new Murph as well? Or are we thinking more radical and going into the new season with a front 3 (Sears, Garner and Didz?), with one in the middle and two supporting strikers playing off that player? I am doubtful but while we don't have much of a midfielder either way, I can see no harm in bypassing it altogether!
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