Town fan Karl Fuller reflects on Town’s draw with Doncaster... A point gained or two dropped?
As is customary by fans of any football club around the world at whatever level of the game after a match where their side has not won, there is a blame attached somewhere along the line and more often than not, quite rightly so.
Therefore, where does the blame lie for Town not beating Doncaster on Saturday?
I've read that it is because we called off our game against Rochdale the weekend before and because of that, we lost the momentum of a winning run that we had built up.
I've also seen some suggest that it is the good old 'Manager of the Month' curse striking once more and then the majority reason bandied about is that on the day, we simply weren't good enough.
Maybe as Paul Lambert's winless run against Doncaster as a manager stretching to four matches (three draws and one defeat) could be cited as another reason for our failure to win.
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Well I'll offer up two reasons of my own.
Firstly, how about we afford some credit to Doncaster. They had a game plan which worked, they came to make it difficult which clearly was an objective achieved and, on that performance, you could see why they reached the play-offs last term and I would not bet against it this season.
The second reason is me!
Partly because I returned to my usual North Stand season-ticket seat for this game having sat elsewhere during the previous couple of games. I've not seen us win since sitting in that seat since January and I use the term 'sitting' lightly as in truth, I don't think I've actually sat in the seat for a very long time.
Nevertheless, I swear it's cursed. We just don't win when I'm in that position. But I'm too stubborn to move.
Then the other reason is my over-confidence, my arrogance if you like of simply believing that especially at Portman Road these days, I just think that we should not be worrying about anybody.
I used to be ultra-realistic in this column I know, but now I'm forever feeling optimistic when really, I should know better. I guess I just got fed up of the days of Mick McCarthy worrying about the opposition and how we should have our line-up selected because of them rather than giving them something to worry about.
On paper, I really do believe that we have the strongest squad in the division. We should be making every opposition worry about us. Then, when moments like the Shrewsbury game come along and they were supposed to be difficult to break down and we did that within 90 seconds, I don't really want to hear how organised Doncaster are going to be blah blah blah….
Naturally, because we did not win, I came out of the ground on Saturday feeling a bit disappointed but within ten minutes or so, I learnt that we had moved up a place to second with a game in hand and thought how we were still unbeaten and had kept another clean sheet and soon the disappointment dissipated and I was content enough with life.
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I guess it's just about balancing out my optimistic pre-match thoughts with a bit of realism still to add to the positivity and make myself realise that we really aren't going to win every game.
In truth, Doncaster might say they deserved all three points and that's one open to debate depending which side you support. James Norwood could also have snatched a win at the end. One thing is for sure is that we still haven't totally clicked yet and the fact that we didn't lose and are in the position we're in can only be a good thing.
Well done to Lambert and all involved on that Manager of the Month win. It's certainly well-deserved and here's hoping for a few more before the season is out.
Onto MK Dons tomorrow evening and it's a shame that it is not live on TV as the last time we won when live on Sky was at Stadium MK back in December 2015. I was there among more than 3,000 Town fans and nearly as many will be there again tomorrow night.
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