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And now for the answers provided by Joe:
How long have you supported Ipswich Town?
I started going at Christmas of our Division 2 title-winning campaign of 1991/92 which saw us win promotion to the inaugural season of the Premier League – we lifted the trophy at Portman Road a few days before my 7th birthday….so as long as I can remember
Where did you finish last season?
11th by the points per game calculation.
What do you think of your Manager?
I would have let him go well before the curtailed end to last season, but he certainly wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to start this one after his previous performance.
What are your hopes and expectations for the 2020/21 season?
Promotion, top 6 as a minimum – the salary cap and our existing squad will make life at this level very difficult for us going forwards.
One(s) to watch?
Gwion Edwards is currently the man of the moment and the top scorer in the league, looking especially dangerous when playing from the left flank, Andre Dozzell is finally getting a run in the team, and playing a Quarterback role where his incredible passing range can get us playing.
Which teams you think will finish in the top six in League One?
In no particular order – Hull, Sunderland, Peterborough, Lincoln, Portsmouth and Ipswich.
Which teams do you think will finish in the bottom four in League One?
Burton, Shrewsbury, Rochdale and AFC Wimbledon.
What are your thoughts on Lincoln City?
I like what Appleton has done in the market and think he has managed to transition the squad very nicely after the fantastic foundations left by the Cowley brothers with regards to the club as a whole. I haven’t enjoyed my previous visits there to see us embarrassed on National TV and then last years debacle!
What do you think the score will be?
1-1.
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Random fact about your Club?
ITFC have never lost a home game in Europe, playing 31 home matches which includes 25 wins and 6 draws. This includes ties against AC Milan, Real Madrid, Barcelona (twice), Inter Milan and teams like St Etienne and Cologne who were very strong in the 80s.
If you could steal one Lincoln City player for your own team, who would it be and why?
Brennan Johnson. I’ve followed him a lot in youth football and watched him score a magnificent hat trick for Forest’s U23s at Portman Road. And his Dad was one of my all-time favourite Ipswich players from our spell under George Burley in the late 90s. Funnily enough, when he scored his hat trick at Portman Road, the Ipswich keeper was also the son of one of Burley’s squad. Harry Wright, son of Richard. I noticed he scored his first goal midweek, and I predict there will be a fair few more to follow.
What are your proudest and most embarrassing moments as an Ipswich Town Supporter?
Proudest – seeing ITFC win the Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley in 2000, after getting so close for the previous 3 seasons it was well earned and a great moment.
Embarrassing – when last season was finished, and we dropped to 11th in League. Having been in the top 2 tiers since the 1950s and have been top by a distance in October – to make such a poor attempt to get back up was a low as an Ipswich fan.
Who would you say is your most underrated player?
In the early part of this season, probably Oli Hawkins. Picked up on a free from Portsmouth in the summer, as we’ve gone to a 433 formation his performances as the focal point of the attack have been really important in bringing our midfield into the game.
Do you have a Supporters Trust and what role do they play at the Club?
We do, but it is basically lying dormant.
Which was your favourite match involving Ipswich Town?
The Play-Off Semi-Final vs Bolton in 2000. We had lost in the Play-off Semi for 3 years previously and in that time had been kicked out of them by Charlton and Bolton in the previous year. They tried again that year in a crazy game which saw us get over the hump and go to Wembley.
Which was your least favourite match involving Ipswich Town?
Any of the derby defeats to Norwich, but most likely when we lost 5-1 at Portman Road as they marched to the title under Paul Lambert – it was as poor a display as we’ve put on and we deserved what we got.
Do you have a Former Players Association at Ipswich Town?
Yes, I think Bryan Hamilton and Simon Milton are the key men for this
What is the best thing about Ipswich?
It’s home! The town gets a bad review from some people, but it has enough things to do, a nice waterfront and makes the coastline in Suffolk very accessible. I’m sure those of us who have had to work from home have enjoyed the huge green spaces the town and surrounding areas has to offer.
Last season you have to agree that you didn’t do as well as you probably expected. Was that partly down to your club expecting League 1 to be easy for a team with your history?
I don’t know, we started the season fantastically with 8 wins and 3 draws from our first 11 games, but for large periods of this we didn’t look convincing. As soon as the tide turned the manager began to rotate incessantly and we just never got going again – bar a small run in January. We had been relegated by a country mile, and I think most fans expected us to come in the top 8 or so – barely any expected automatic promotion, but the start to the season gave us such a platform to build from the fall was hugely disappointing.
Has last seasons failure been one of the reasons behind your good start? Have the lessons been learned?
One of the key lessons that seems to have been learnt is the end to the rotation – we were going through periods where we would change the formation and 4-5 players for each game over 7 or 8 game period, and that’s not an exaggeration. This season we have played the same way all through pre-season and for every game so far with a hugely consistent team selection – despite a massive injury crisis we have not veered away from this approach.
When Ipswich lost 5-3 at Lincoln last season, many Ipswich supporters expected Lambert to be sacked, instead, he got a long contract. What were your thoughts then, and what are your thoughts now?
We’d started the season on fire, as mentioned previously – but from there we’d picked up 10 points in 11 games, and hadn’t won for 7 – this excludes cup games which extended that winless run. The wheels were coming off big time and we looked like a drunk stumbling from one formation to the next trying to throw enough mud at the wall and hoping for something to stick. I felt he should have gone at that point, but it may have been a bit early – however, to get a 5-year contract was absolutely ludicrous, and the decision presumably made any potential change of manager in the summer much harder.
I’m still not a huge fan, I can’t fault what he is trying to do this season but it is a year too late and an experienced manager shouldn’t have failed so badly. He has a long way to go for me to think he is the right man.
Sorry to ask this, but last season’s collapse was remarkable. Ipswich were top of League One when they beat Lincoln 1-0 on 25 January, but one win, one draw and seven defeats immediately after that saw them finish in mid-table. What went wrong?
Mostly covered above, but after the new contract, we did stick with a settled team and formation, picked up 10 points from 5 in January and looked as though the season was back on track. But over the next few games, we came up against the divisions top teams, and there organisation and fluidity left us for dead as we just had never settled and had proper patterns of play and were shown up. Realistically the blip was the January form – even with that we picked up more points in the first 11 games (27 points) than we did in the subsequent 25 (25 points).
Marcus Evans believes Ipswich have been hit harder by lockdown and subsequent events than any other League One club. Movement in and out of the club during the summer was minimal – was that a result of the financial pressures Evans alludes to, or was it a sign that Lambert was happy with his squad despite that collapse?
We were running as a Championship club with regards to contract lengths, which meant that we had over 40 players on professional contracts through this season. The collapse of the market meant that there was very little scope for any player trading so Lambert has had to go with what we had. There were 3 permanent additions, all signed on free transfers and a couple of young loan players since then. The squad is big, but we consistently have injury problems, last week we had to play Alan Judge as a false 9 as our 4 first choice strikers were injured, and we only play one up front! With the salary cap, moving players on was next to impossible.
At the time Lincoln knocked Ipswich out of the FA Cup in 2017, many fans were already unhappy with Mick McCarthy and his style of play. Do you think Ipswich would have been relegated in 2019 if they had kept him? Did Paul Hurst simply take over a poor squad?
Ipswich wouldn’t have been relegated with Mick McCarthy, but we needed a fresh start at the club. The squad Paul Hurst took on needed to evolve, but he ripped it up and started again – out went Adam Webster, Joe Garner and Martyn Waghorn, and were replaced by players who had done well in League 1 like Jon Nolan, Toto Nsiala, Gwion Edwards and Ellis Harrison, or League 2 in Kayden Jackson and Janoi Donacien. They simply weren’t good enough and Hurst massively underestimated the step-up between the 2 leagues – some are now finally showing some form – but that summer is one we are still trying to recover from now 2 years later – it was the most disastrous summer/transfer window in the club’s history.
Have a go at our Lincoln City v Ipswich Town Quiz below:
The second set of answers:https://t.co/WS2JOa11hC#ImpsAsOne #ProudToBeImps #ITFC pic.twitter.com/uIbGWYGkfJ
— Vital Lincoln City (@VitalLincoln1) October 24, 2020
https://www.facebook.com/VitalLincolnCity/posts/3400320870004134
