Where will the goals come from?

For those not in the know this is a fairly primitive but popular contemporary football chant that follows, in most cases, a goal. The irony then of the North Stand breaking into a chorus of this after Reading’s third goal doesn’t really need much explaining.

The boss told us to judge them when the squad was fit. Big mistake Mr Royle. With only Proudlock and Garvan missing, I have to say I, along with 22,000 who had made the journey out into a bitter cold night were not impressed!

It was a night when I was watching and thinking ‘have we turned into THAT team that everyone is going to watch now and think; Ipswich, they used to be able to play a bit’. I don’t want us to be another Forest, Bradford, Sheffield Wednesday etc. but Tuesday night, not for the first time this season, I was worried…

Fair enough Reading are a quality side at this level and Lita certainly stood head and tail above any of the other strikers I’ve seen in this division and others such as Convey and Sidwell looked class.

It will have also been noted that this result took The Royals to the top of the league and stretched their unbeaten run in all competitions to 22 games, a club record.

However, it has to be asked how much of a fight did we put up?

Now I have this little thing where I get really worried when I see the opposition gather into a huddle before kick-off and we all just stand there looking sheepish. You know the one. It happened Tuesday and I feared the worst.

Psychologically you can almost be one nil down. Just look at how the All Blacks have worked it over the years.

But then I see Joe’s only gone with Parkin as a lone striker, with a five man midfield. What kind of a message does this negative approach send to the fans, the players and the oppostition. I’ll answer the last one for you; it says ‘come and have a go because we’re not going to’.

Do I even need to explain how many times this formation hasn’t worked before at Portman Road? I’ll save space by just naming Preston as my exemplar.

The only cheer of the night (not in an ironic sense; there was a very loud one when we registered our first shot after 64minutes!) came when Bam-bam/Psycho was pushed up front, just a shame no-one else could do the job properly.

This leads me to my next point, I don’t wish to align myself with the Ipswich ‘Boo-boys’ too vehemently but we’re now going into December with our top summer signing and star striker still to register a goal at Portman Road. I’ve tried to give him time to settle at this level and had patience but so far all I’ve witnessed is an over 6 foot striker that can’t head the ball, can’t hold it up, is short of pace and is having problems finding the net.

Yet the problem of the team this year seems to lie in the irony that he is our top scorer. The injury he incurred against Reading now means Sam is out for twelve weeks with a broken ankle and I wish him a speedy recovery and hope he can enforce a similar rapport with our fans that he had with the Swindon faithful in the near future. A run of goals and he’ll be our hero; football's a fickle world.

However, with all the media hype surrounding Peter Crouch’s failure to score a goal this season it led me to think; when does the time come to stop praising a player that isn’t doing what he’s there for and start looking to hurt a reaction into him? If I or any other worker in the country was under performing at work I know how my boss would react…..

I was amongst the half, incidentally, that were crying, rather than laughing when Fozzy started spooning shots over the North Stand towards the end of the match. It really was desperate stuff but I did manage to ride it out to the final whistle; I just don’t understand the logic in paying so much to see 90 minutes of football and then leaving before the end; baffling!?

I was also delighted to see that we’ve loaned out another viable striker in Dean McDonald, don’t worry lads, we don’t need any strikers at the moment!

The former Arsenal trainee has all the pace and skill that we’re currently lacking in the final third, he is a player that can hurt defenders and he showed that against Sheffield Wednesday and more recently at Derby. I just don’t understand this move by Royle.

The only plus point about the Reading match was the promise of Gavin Williams. Playing down the right-hand side he had a solid performance, while those around him, well, didn’t (Sito, Price and Naylor I’ll exclude). I hope there is a plan in place to extent his deal beyond the one month in some form.

The boss threw a bit of a wobbly at Radio Suffolk in his after-match interview and will not help his reputation with the fans if he persists in trying to blame us for the team’s failings. Imagine we were always to create a cauldron of noise during a performance such as Reading, the players would surely think it acceptable, as we appear happy and they’d fall into a more comfortable comfort zone than some of them, arguably, are already in now-a-days.

I honestly understand the difficult circumstances that the club has been in but I, along with everyone else, just want to see whoever is wearing the Blue shirt give it their all and display some passion for the club. Unfortunately that didn’t appear to be happening the other night.

Fans are becoming worried about Joe’s motivational capabilities and the next couple of matches are tricky but it will show if he can lift the players and will be in light of this where he makes or breaks friendships as far as the fans are concerned. I’m of the opinion that we should never watch our team not give the opposition a game in this league; we’re Ipswich Town.

To put a little optimism into this column I do maintain with the resources currently available we can make a play-off place our own this season. The league is so open.

The problem we now face, however, is that we are as many points off a play-off place as we are a relegation spot (6 points) and a defeat in Cardiff, never an easy place to play, would push us closer towards the latter and then the real negative talk would start….

I’m usually terrible with the Christmas wish-list but this year I’m certain; give me a stream of goals and it’ll be as good as a white Christmas…..so, will the mystery man capable of scoring the goals please emerge from the shadows…..