Empty Sky

ITFC 1-2 Cardiff October 6th 2012

I get the idea that there doesn't seem to be long term plan at Ipswich, we seem to change strategies quite often, this season we were we going for younger players on long contracts and not too many loanee's, now we have seven loan players, mainly old, it is now getting quite worrying, I can't work out if its ME, SC, PJ or a combination of all three but I don't like it and am getting a bit pissed off with them!!

We had another three loanee's arrive on Friday, DJ Campbell from QPR, Bilel Mohsni from Southend, both for three months and the one that I can't understand, Richie Wellens from Leicester in for a month, he's not match fit and it's not like we haven't got cover in midfield. The Michael Chopra saga rolls on, he's now been charged with race fixing and so was omitted from the squad. Although the allegations made are prior to him joining ITFC it still tarnishes the club, I feel sorry for him with his addiction but perhaps it's time to move him on.

It took a while for the penny to drop, the bluebirds were playing in red which is now their home colour, last season it would have been their away kit. A deal with the devil? The change of colour is designed to help their new owners market the club in Asia, money talks! Long live tradition - whatever next?  We'll be playing with the owners name emblazoned on our shirts!

A new fanzine

"We still play in blue, we still play in blue, you sell out bastards, we still play in blue", sang the North stand. I'd go along with a change of colour if it meant real backing for the club. I read a piece last week by Stuart Watson on the Green'Un24 website comparing Paul Jewell's and Roy Keane's time in charge of the club and was surprised to read that between them they have spent £13.35 million on transfers but received £13.7 million on player sales (albeit Connor Wickham £8.1million and Jordan Rhodes £4.6 million!) I know that it doesn't reflect any wages but how much has Marcus Evans really stumped up? Rumour has it that he charges ITFC annual interest on the money that he invested in buying the club, how much is all the publicity worth? He likes to keep a low profile physically but his name is everywhere.

Anyway rant over, it was a 5.20pm kick off live on Sky and fortunately Nottingham Forest had won at Peterborough earlier to keep us off the bottom. I was confident that we could get a win against the league leaders, we started well and for the first half there was a feel good factor at Portman Road. A decent atmosphere in the ground and a positive performance on the pitch was rounded off by DJ scoring on his debut with his hand in injury time.

Got my copy £1

Cardiff got back into the match as the second half wore on, they levelled and then went on to get a late winner in the 87th minute, both goals scored by Heidar Helguson aided by some shaky goalkeeping from Scott Loach. So once again we came away empty handed from a match we could have won and certainly shouldn't have lost, ten games in we are now four points from safety, it's only the beginning of October and we can start to plan our trips away (non football) because the play-off's already seem an impossibility, it's all about survival.

Playlist

Should have been Last night a DJ saved my life by Carl Cox but that all went tits up! So it's Empty Sky by Bruce Springsteen - we used it to test out a Bose sound system in Matthew's before the game and seeing how we lost on Sky TV it seemed appropriate.