The View From Churchmans

Well, a heck of a lot's changed at the club in a fortnight, and who on earth would have thought the ground would have been almost sold out for a fairly pointless kickaround against a club whose season was even more over? I'm not quite sure what all these occasional supporters thought they'd see, but what the new manager saw was a fairly representative example of the slightly ... More...

I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be so elated as a Town supporter. What a fantastic day (and I don't mean the weather). I simply floated home. When you think about it, this was just a narrow home win against a poor bottom-three side. Big deal. Of course, it was a lot, lot more than that, but the reason was not entirely because it was a derby ... More...

One of those games where I've had to give myself 24 hours to compose myself before writing anything. That's eight points from ten home games now, and the only worse ten-game run Portman Road has seen in this division since reaching it for the first time was back when a certain Mr Duncan was manager; alarmingly, that's *Scott* Duncan, not John, and it was back in 1954. The ... More...

Just one win in nine home games now (and it was a lucky one too); this is the only time a sequence as bad as that has happened to Ipswich in the Championship in the last 20 years, and possibly longer. Thank goodness the defensive nightmares against Swansea and Southampton were an aberration, because things have just dried up going forward: just two goals scored in the five ... More...

The current poor home league run now stands at just one win in eight, but Burnley were one of the best sides to have visited Portman Road this season, and after the Southampton debacle, this was certainly an improvement for the home supporters (the away fans presumably watch a completely different team). Town lined up in a curious 4-3-1-2 formation to allow Dos Santos to play in a ... More...

I think that after this, our esteemed club owner might regret getting involved with the argument over Jim Magilton's future a fortnight ago. It's made it harder to do what he's surely going to have to do sooner rather than later, and replace the manager. This was a whole different scenario to the half-dozen successive poor performances we'd previously seen at Portman Road: in those, the team just ... More...

Wha-hey! Three points at home for the first time in a couple of months, so let's at least be grateful for that. My records don't go back far enough to have been able to have told you the last time Ipswich went six home games without a win. However, I doubt this performance will have changed the "Jim Out" brigade's opinion of the state of the club. It ... More...

Yet another game notable only for its lack of anything memorable, although I suppose there's a chance that one day we might say to our grandchildren "I was there for Town legend Luciano Civelli's debut". We're scraping the barrel here though. That's five home league games in a row without a win, something which hasn't happened since the autumn of 1995, a time when Neil Gregory was keeping ... More...

I should have written this report as soon as I got home, because it was a game which will live short in the memory, and one which I've just about forgotten already. Plymouth rode their luck, but we were our own worst enemy. Over two dozen attempts on goal, sure, but only one or two required heroics from their keeper or defenders, and the rest of our opportunities were ... More...

OK, let's start with the up side. Town played some bright, attractive football, and against a poorer side would surely have ended up comfortable winners. It was a lively match throughout, and well worth braving the cold for. Was this a 4-2-4 formation, rather than a 4-4-2? If Thatcher and Bruce spent as much time forward as Haynes and Walters did back in defence, in my eyes that ... More...

With so many recent performances being quite dispiriting, nobody could complain about Jim ringing the changes yet again, but I don't think anyone expected to see a lone striker (at home!) and the return of Ivan Campo ...at centre-back. The surprises didn't stop there. The disappointing Jon Walters really isn't "undroppable" after all, and Shumi seems to have disappeared without trace. All most intriguing. But the result was much ... More...

Well, it would appear that the few minutes after half-time on Wednesday night were the exception, not the sign that things were looking up. Three matches in seven days, that's well over 270 minutes of football, and I can't say we've played well for more than about 20 of them. This can't be allowed to continue, surely: whatever people say about the individual players, they're good enough that ... More...

At the end of this match, my brother described the game as "a bit silly really", and to be honest, I can't improve on that summary. Town started off offering nothing, and made matters worse by conceding a soft breakaway goal with people still coming in to the ground. But gradually through the first half the team started to get its act together, led by an industrious Pablo, ... More...

What is it with Sheffield Utd matches? There always seems to be plenty to talk about after them, that's for sure. Just as their style seems to remain constant even as management comes and goes, so we also saw the best and worst of what we've come to expect from Ipswich over the years: some nice passing, a strong performance lacking only the final cutting edge, and... a ... More...

A solid, well-deserved victory - our third two-nil at home this season, and it's probably no coincidence that these have been three of the most satisfying performances too. The team all seemed up for it, and although Derby were poor (was Wrighty's easy save at the end the only one he had to make?), we didn't do anything silly, as is so often the case against unimpressive opposition. ... More...