Fuller Flavour: I’ve lost count of Ipswich fans saying the club is dying a slow death

One young Town fan after the defeat at Craven Cottage (Image: Pagepix Ltd.07976 935738)

The wait goes on for back-to-back wins and the wait goes on where I can sit a write a positive column reflecting on a weekend win – it has only been eight weeks!

One can only hope that last Tuesday night’s win over a very poor Wigan outfit will be enough now to keep us in the Championship as with the games to come, we’re not going to get much more out of this season.

Burton on Friday night will be tough given that they are scrapping for safety themselves, and I dread to think how many Newcastle will beat us by.

Rotherham’s only away point of the season came courtesy of us of course and it wouldn’t surprise me to see them back this up with a victory over us at their place, Sheffield Wednesday could need a victory in our last home game to keep up their play-off aspirations.

And as for the final game at Nottingham Forest, you can see it now – a nothing game, we’re 2-0 up going into injury-time of which there are seven minutes and Forest will score twice!

I’ve been in dialogue with a few fans over the past week either face-to-face or via e-mail and unsurprisingly, the common theme in our conversations has been the state of Ipswich Town.

If I’ve heard one person say that the club is dying a slow death then I’ve heard it at least a dozen times.

It’s gotten to the stage now where it’s difficult to put any more meat on the bones of the columns of the past few weeks and yet what amazes me, is that not far off 3,000 fans still have the guts to go and front things out at Fulham.

I’m a long-time Town fan of 38 years and have attended around 740 games but there’s just no way that I’m tempted to an away day right now.

I’m sure those of you that visited the capital on Saturday had a great day until 3pm, especially if you were cruising down the Thames on a boat.

I understand why so many are going to Burton on Friday, it is after all a new ground to tick off that only football fans would understand the need to do this.

But whilst I very rarely ever expect to see us win when I have travelled away, I’d at least like to see our efforts rewarded with a side chosen with a plan and a purpose and I’m also finding it very difficult right now to even attend home games under the current circumstances.

With five columns of the season left including this one, it’s time to reflect back on my five wishes listed in the first column of the season to see how they didn’t come true starting with the first wish that was ‘to see some more entertaining football’.

This wish was based on a statement I made at the end of last season where I honestly felt like I left the ground at the end of a game having only thoroughly enjoying a game on two occasions in the whole of the 2015/16 campaign and this was largely down to the fact that we’d scored last minute winners against QPR and Leeds.

So how many games have I felt like I’d seen more entertaining football and enjoyed this term? None!

If I was pushed, I guess I’d have to go back to the first game of the season where we beat Barnsley 4-2 and Grant Ward scored a debut hat-trick.

But that was only one half of excitement. The first-half of that game was very forgettable.

I also recall feeling better about performances in draws against Reading and Leeds (again) in February but there was no level of thorough enjoyment reached and that is all I can muster.

This season has been bad and my other four wishes have not fared much better.