POST-MATCH THREAD: Ipswich Town vs Charlton Athletic | Saturday 15th April 2023 | KO 3.00PM

Highlight of my day trip to Ipswich was free electric car charging in car park near the ground and a Wagamamas. Awful performance, the players should be docked wages. It’s really difficult trying to convince a young children to go and watch a team performing that badly and being stuck in 3rd division for the entirety of their lives. When will it get better? 

sirjohnhumphrey said:

Sometimes it just happens. A game comes along where it all goes wrong. There are examples of it happening this season in all divisions.
When you’re two down in fifteen minutes against the best team in the league then, yes, rightly or wrongly, heads will drop. It becomes a mammoth ask to get anything from the game.
The post-mortem will highlight individual performances and Hector in particular has come in for some criticism today. Let’s not gloss over the fact that many on here have been praising him since signing and suggesting he is capable of playing a higher level. One poor performance doesn’t change that. Same for AMB.
We have been outclassed today but there is some comfort in that it was by a team on top of their game with a squad that is superior in every department. Ladapo, for example had 17 goals before today and was on the bench. 
As a fan base we know we’re in trouble. Off the pitch we are a mess and I genuinely fear for our status at the moment. The only joy we can hope for is on the pitch and when it goes like it did today the future looks even more bleak. 

A positive is Holden. He may have got it wrong today but hindsight is a wonderful thing and he could have parked the bus and we still may have been tonked. But he is certainly in credit and I have faith that he will deal with today’s setback.
On the playing front Leaburn, AMB, Ness, Mitchell, Dobson, Campbell and hopefully Kanu. We desperately need some quality, experienced players in who give a damn. I’m still hopeful that McGrandles could prove to be a decent player. 
Fraser is hit and miss but when on form is a capable performer. 

League 1 is what it is. A collection of pretty average squads who are all capable of producing something at both ends of the performance spectrum. 

Today, we were outclassed, outthought and outplayed. It happens.

Congrats on a very measured & sensible post, sjh. I wish I could be as level headed after that abject performance but I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve & my overwhelming emotion at the final whistle was one of anger. I always clap the players when they come over to the away end but today, petulance reduced me to standing, watching them, arms folded, thinking "What am I doing here ?"

Sometimes I've mentioned the word pantomime after witnessing a kamikaze performance from our hapless lads ....today there were 11 Ugly Sisters out on the pitch, with comedic antics at time as though playing for laughs. Tripping over their own feet was a regular feature - something I found quite unsettling as though a few pints had been consumed on the coach as it sped its way up the A12. However, there was no need to shout " Behind you!" as it was all too evident that the boys in blue were MUCH closer than that 99% of the time....

But to refer to sjh's post once again, it is a fair summary of where we are at this moment in time. We are in trouble, for me there's no doubt. IF we bounce back & finish this season on a relative high, then maybe optimism will return and it was a game when " it just happened". 

But whether our current American gives it another shot if he fails to achieve his asking price, or whether the prospective purchaser who also hails from across the Pond decides to try his luck, I'm not filled with overwhelming optimism. Maybe I'm feeling unfairly critical of American owners - Todd Boehly has mega wealth but what does he know about English football clubs, as the Chelsea faithful are rumoured to be muttering. We're more likely to have an owner who is neither mega rich or knowledgeable as far as the Beautiful game is concerned. And with a significant overhaul of the current squad seemingly required, where does that leave our famous football club ? Season after season in L1 ? 

So, forgive me if I'm lacking in the belief that our fortunes will change any time soon. There is a mountain to climb, and my old legs are unlikely to be up to it. But we won't be removing our support in this hour of need, even though the prospect of a visit to Milton Keynes on Tuesday evening is far from enticing at this moment in time.

Maybe all I need is a bottle of Lidl's finest & a good night's sleep to restore my faith.

Season ticket decision made. Someone mentioned Dobson and questioned how Costa could be a legend. Dear oh dear.

Ipswich are quality. They could easily go straight up again next season if they do they expected & get promoted from L1 this year.

I’d say they are already better than the likes of Millwall, Luton & Blackburn etc in the Championship top 6.

Fanny Fanackapan said:

sirjohnhumphrey said:

Sometimes it just happens. A game comes along where it all goes wrong. There are examples of it happening this season in all divisions.
When you’re two down in fifteen minutes against the best team in the league then, yes, rightly or wrongly, heads will drop. It becomes a mammoth ask to get anything from the game.
The post-mortem will highlight individual performances and Hector in particular has come in for some criticism today. Let’s not gloss over the fact that many on here have been praising him since signing and suggesting he is capable of playing a higher level. One poor performance doesn’t change that. Same for AMB.
We have been outclassed today but there is some comfort in that it was by a team on top of their game with a squad that is superior in every department. Ladapo, for example had 17 goals before today and was on the bench. 
As a fan base we know we’re in trouble. Off the pitch we are a mess and I genuinely fear for our status at the moment. The only joy we can hope for is on the pitch and when it goes like it did today the future looks even more bleak. 

A positive is Holden. He may have got it wrong today but hindsight is a wonderful thing and he could have parked the bus and we still may have been tonked. But he is certainly in credit and I have faith that he will deal with today’s setback.
On the playing front Leaburn, AMB, Ness, Mitchell, Dobson, Campbell and hopefully Kanu. We desperately need some quality, experienced players in who give a damn. I’m still hopeful that McGrandles could prove to be a decent player. 
Fraser is hit and miss but when on form is a capable performer. 

League 1 is what it is. A collection of pretty average squads who are all capable of producing something at both ends of the performance spectrum. 

Today, we were outclassed, outthought and outplayed. It happens.

Congrats on a very measured & sensible post, sjh. I wish I could be as level headed after that abject performance but I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve & my overwhelming emotion at the final whistle was one of anger. I always clap the players when they come over to the away end but today, petulance reduced me to standing, watching them, arms folded, thinking "What am I doing here ?"

Sometimes I've mentioned the word pantomime after witnessing a kamikaze performance from our hapless lads ....today there were 11 Ugly Sisters out on the pitch, with comedic antics at time as though playing for laughs. Tripping over their own feet was a regular feature - something I found quite unsettling as though a few pints had been consumed on the coach as it sped its way up the A12. However, there was no need to shout " Behind you!" as it was all too evident that the boys in blue were MUCH closer than that 99% of the time....

But to refer to sjh's post once again, it is a fair summary of where we are at this moment in time. We are in trouble, for me there's no doubt. IF we bounce back & finish this season on a relative high, then maybe optimism will return and it was a game when " it just happened". 

But whether our current American gives it another shot if he fails to achieve his asking price, or whether the prospective purchaser who also hails from across the Pond decides to try his luck, I'm not filled with overwhelming optimism. Maybe I'm feeling unfairly critical of American owners - Todd Boehly has mega wealth but what does he know about English football clubs, as the Chelsea faithful are rumoured to be muttering. We're more likely to have an owner who is neither mega rich or knowledgeable as far as the Beautiful game is concerned. And with a significant overhaul of the current squad seemingly required, where does that leave our famous football club ? Season after season in L1 ? 

So, forgive me if I'm lacking in the belief that our fortunes will change any time soon. There is a mountain to climb, and my old legs are unlikely to be up to it. But we won't be removing our support in this hour of need, even though the prospect of a visit to Milton Keynes on Tuesday evening is far from enticing at this moment in time.

Maybe all I need is a bottle of Lidl's finest & a good night's sleep to restore my faith.

Only few weeks ago we were winning 6-0 and the same players were the best we seen in Charlton shirt … it’s called football 
you get freak results we have seen it time and time again we been involved in them many times .. 
we lost but how you look at it 2 loses in 8 … defence has been fantastic , Hector don’t become a bad player because of today , we had to keep it tight all credit to Ipswich got two goals and game over .. but credit to Charlton because from 14 min to 70 min we were in it . Pen ? Yes on Saki but this ref after Ipswich hand picked him was never going to give us anything today .

Oh Eddie Youds... said:

Ipswich are quality. They could easily go straight up again next season if they do they expected & get promoted from L1 this year.

I’d say they are already better than the likes of Millwall, Luton & Blackburn etc in the Championship top 6.

I think if we played any of them 3 from the championship we would get absolutely smashed if we played  like we did today Ipswich are a good side but we made them look loads better then they are 

Jonniesta said:

45 lifers predicted us to lose today. The squad simply isn't good enough. We were never going to run a team close that's top of the league, at home, and needs the points. It was depressing, but we know no more now than we did before... there are too many sub-standard players in the squad, not enough who will stand up and be counted. I'm not blaming Holden for today as it's hard to see what else he could do with that lot. But unless we have a major squad overhaul we'll have another season of this. Incredible that we're not challenging the top teams since we improved our squad so much after last year's debacle by spending... err... nothing. 

As for the 2 lifers who predicted us not to lose... full marks for optimism...

I'm slightly blaming Holden.
Against Brighton we set up differently. No high press, fill the spaces, played on the break. Wasn't Anthony Hayes's tactics?
Much better performance. We had a plan and it worked. We play the same way every week, no matter who we're playing. That's not good enough (clearly).

MuttleyCAFC said:

Going to Milton Keynes on Tuesday. Not too excited about it after that but maybe we will see a reaction.

I’m going too but do you really expect that? This squad hasn’t got any bollocks and, after today, I wouldn’t care if we ditch the lot at the the end of the season…

ross1 said:

Best thing to happen losing 6-0, now the new owners know what a bad squad we have

Yep  they'll bring in loans from League 2.

.

limeygent said:

thecat said:

Massive gulf in class but Holden got the tactics completely wrong today

There were tactics?

Correct. Going two down so early, we were always likely on to a hiding. Bonne putting his chance away, may have changed things.
As Curbs and Brownie said, against top teams who are better than you, you sit back, man mark, and frustrate the hell out of them and take the initial heat out of their game, then try to nick a goal. 
Instead we tried to play our usual game and outplay them. 
That was never going to happen.
Holden showed his managerial inexperience and one of the best Investments the new owners could make would be to engage either Curbs or Brownie, or both, in some capacity.

Brownie knew how to defend, Curbs knew how to get the best out of what he had to work with.
We need both of these qualities right now.
Our defending is atrocious.

Chippycafc said:

How many times does a team score 10 goals against you in the two games you meet in a season.

And it's 14 in the last 3. Be glad to see back of Ipswich.