The View From Churchmans

What a day. What. A. Day. My wife (3 years a supporter) and myself (30 years) travelled up to the game by train from Cambridge with some Barnsley-supporting friends. The feeling in the Barnsley camp was that they were lucky to be there, and were going to enjoy it, but the team wasn't a patch on the one that got promoted 3 years ago, and would die in the Premiership. They were going ... More...

What a night. WHAT A NIGHT. Where to start? The Bolton list is buzzing this morning with abuse flying everywhere, particularly towards the referee, as you might expect. Ten yellows, two reds for Bolton. No cards for Ipswich. Three penalties conceded by Bolton. None by Ipswich. So has the chant "X-X to the football team" ever been more appropriate? I don't know. Bolton weren't anything like as dirty as that suggests. But they were their ... More...

Well, the bookies were spot on - the spread bet for "how many minutes are they going to be in the Premiership?" was Ipswich 7-10, Man.City 80-83, and for exactly those few minutes we were in heaven. The lads gave their all and once again played well in a pressure match - could that be the difference between this year and the last three in terms of the playoffs? I was a little ... More...

Nervous, unconfident and disorganised, but we got through. That was by far the best thing about last night though. Ten shots, three on target, against a very ordinary team like Palace? Well, nobody expected a goal-fest with Johnson/Scowcroft up front (never has worked, never will) but we might have expected a bit more at least. Now, however, it's time to play You Are The Manager... Your promotion hunting side is one-nil up and performing ... More...

Perhaps not as sweeping an improvement as the scoreline suggests, not that we weren't good value ...but for a successive season Port Vale played straight into our hands with exactly the type of tactics our play is geared up to score against. It's a shame to see us struggle against hateful play-killers like Tranmere then brush aside footballing sides like Port Vale, but I remember several people saying the same thing last year. It ... More...

The wife said before the game in front of everyone: "I had this dream last night of a dark-haired player who nobody had ever seen before coming on for us as substitute and scoring at the North Stand end. I can see it now, clear in my mind, it's bright sunshine, and he's standing on the halfway line with both arms raised, and all the others are rushing over to congratulate him." As ... More...

OK, on Tuesday night it was acceptable not to get three points so long as we played well and proved Portsmouth was just a blip. But playing this well yesterday without getting three points was Not Good. We went with some Wolves regulars, who said beforehand in the pub opposite that they expected Ipswich to do the normal Ipswich thing, string loads of wonderful passes together, then not know what to do once ... More...

I know there's a very good argument for "results are everything, performance is nothing" at this stage, but I'd almost have sacrificed the two points to see last night's tremendous first half display, rather than discussing another crap performance even if we'd won. Again though, the problem was a lack of Plan B. Blackburn's woefully ineffective left side in the first half gave Wilnis acres of space (despite Wilnis playing almost as a winger, ... More...

There was a slight air of unreality about this one starting well before the match. People were joking that if we were ever going to lose the unbeaten record, it would of course be against the worst opposition ...but they were only half-joking. And at the ground, the atmosphere was so flat before and during the game it was hard to believe. Of course, after all the discussion on the list about how ... More...

File this one under Just The Sort Of Performance We Needed. If you weren't there, don't let the late goal fool you: we were well worth the three points against a poor Crewe side, but (as usual) the faithful had to endure plenty of heart-stopping moments. Marcus Stewart had a stomach upset, and George Burley obviously went down in sympathy by having a brain upset: here's a good idea, Fabien Wilnis has been ... More...

Aha! A bit of commitment right through 90 minutes! That's more like it! Not a classic display, perhaps a little ragged at times, but definitely a fine performance overall, and Huddersfield were probably the best side we've had at Portman Road all season (and let's hope it stays that way!). Jim and Matt were magnificent in midfield, holding their own against four decent Huddersfield players, although I really think GB should have given ... More...

Another one of those games where it didn't really come together for us, too many below-par performances, and there wasn't a Plan B (George never seems to have one). Although we had most of the play, and Sheffield were yet another in the long succession of visitors to FPR with no real imagination, in the end neither team deserved a win. Plus points were Matt's 110%, Scowie's continued form as a defenders' nightmare, ... More...

In contrast to one or two recent matches, the score was probably better than the performance, although we were well worth a three-nil - Swindon were fairly clueless. However, none of the strikers had a particularly good day, (Psycho's inevitable non-stop effort probably made him the pick of the bunch) so there wasn't much to get us excited. The most encouraging aspect of all was seeing Matt AND Jim having good games - ... More...

I've just read a staggering Daily Torygraph report which says, and I quote, "Such was the quality of this promotion contest, past heroes such as Terry Butcher and Alan Brazil may not have felt out of place as George Burley's team stretched their unbeaten league run to 10 games." Come again? OK, we weren't bad for parts of the first half, but the reporter wasn't watching the same game as the rest of us. ... More...

I'm not sure we can learn much from this. We were on fire in the first half an hour or so, but as West Brom began to get more and more physical, one by one our players started to get very intimidated, and by the end only the very hardest (Scowie, Matt and Jim) were prepared to mix it. We lost our shape and quite frankly, we looked like the side with ... More...