A very bad day at the office!

I have said in my previous column that with just a few injuries we will struggle in this league and that was never more apparent than against Preston. You do need a squad to play 2 games in 3 days but other championship clubs managed it.

I also told people that David Nugent was some player and he'd score against us...it turned out he was a different class and his performance reminded me of when defoe stood out by a mile at Portman Road, just before he departed to Tottenham.

Nugent was the bargain of all bargains at 100k last season and I'm sure he'll be in the Premiership very soon.

When the team for Preston was announced I was disgusted. Sorry Mr Royle but playing a 4-5-1 formation at home will win you no friends among the Ipswich fans.

If there is one problem we have had so far this season then for me, Big Joe summed it up perfectly after the Preston game, "we passed the ball well without looking a goal threat", that quote could apply to a number of games this season, including the Yeovil game but do you help matters by only
playing one striker? Come on, it is surely that simple...the system was even changed soon after Nugent's goals.

Bowditch has shown he has bags of potential but has had two games where he hasn't really been in it but I can't help thinking that with a taller strike partner than Dean McDonald he might benefit more but that obviously wasn't Royle's thinking on Moday.

At least Saturday's victory at Millwall showed we do have some of last season's fighting spirit left in this side. You can't ask more than going on to win a game at a place like The Den when down to 10 men. By the way, good to see Marshall's kicking hasn't improved since he left us!

After the Yeovil game I agreed with Royle's comments that maybe the exit from the cup was a blessing in disguise because at the moment we don't have a squad that can cope with a cup run.

However, you can't charge the fans to watch the game if the players hearts aren't in it and it just didn't look like they were. To make it worse I took 2 friends along to the game and felt the need to apologize come the end. But I would not have the booing that ensued from the north stand during that match. We fielded the youngest senior side in Ipswich's history that night, with an average age of 22 and the young players need encouragement to progress and in fact, I thought Aidan Collins was outstanding. It was the senior players that upset me against Yeovil, it was a game in which they needed to stand up and be counted and help the youngsters through but their performances that night were far less than mediocre, which left the youngsters hung out to dry.

What does worry me at this stage of the campaign is that despite a largely good start before the bank holiday, the only sides we had faced were those that you wouldn't expect to make the top six.

Preston are in fact the first team we have faced that you would consider serious play-off contenders, providing they hang-on to Nugent, and we lose to them 4-0 at home!?

September brings the sternest test, with us having to face many of the fancied sides in this division with trips to Sheffield, Leeds and home games against Southampton and Naarwich. September is the month where we will get found out if the squad isn't good enough. I'd be very happy with draws at Sheffield and leeds and looking for wins at home, ultimately though the derby clash is the one we all want points from above anything else though!

Sorry that it's been a largely pessimistic column this time around but I'm very much still suffering from yesterday but it's said that every cloud has a silver linning and I believe that the signing of Jay McEveley is just that.

Matt Richards has his critics and I'm not always one of them but his performance yesterday was unacceptable and highlighted to me during the game how he can have an awful preformance like that and still know he'll retain his position because who else can play at left-back?

So I'm optimistic that McEveley is an astute signing. He's an England U21 international that played 14 premiership games last season and was wanted by a number of Championship clubs. Mark Hughes was reluctant to let him go out on loan but he's done it twice before and Jay knows this division from his time with the Gill's.

He's just the kind of player I was saying we needed in my previous columns, rather than an Unsworth type-player and he's come to us because he wants to play a passing style, so lets see if he can brighten up Portman Road...

(P.S. For all those still suffering from Bank holiday's result I prescribe a copy of the league table, a comfy chair and a glance down at the last four places. You may feel a smile coming on, followed by a laugh, but don't worry, this is perfectly normal and your depression should clear up almost immediately when glancing back up the table....)