In his weekly look at life at Ipswich Town, MIKE BACON, makes the point that Town could still end the season on a huge high
Wouldn’t it be funny if Ipswich Town get promoted back to the Championship this season?
Funny – as in ‘happy’ funny – not as in ‘strange’ funny.
It’s already being whispered that the football season may start up again in early June – probably behind closed doors.
But who cares? It looks more likely than not that the season is going to be played out and that of course means Lambo’s Blues are still in the race for a play-off spot, then who knows should they grab one?
Be honest, before lockdown, we were all saying that Town don’t have the hardest run-in of clubs around them. They have one of the best squads, hopefully now almost fully fit.
There is no reason they couldn’t string a late run together. And if they do...
After all the joy of the start of the season, the groans of the five-year deal for Lambo and the general malaise that has settled in over recent months, there may, just may, be a silver lining to all this.
Wouldn’t it be fun?
I mean Paul Lambert’s win ratio for the Blues is terrible compared to most Town managers of the past. But he still has the chance to be a Blues hero! That’s football!
Certainly, this break will reset football as a whole.
My eldest son is at Liverpool Uni and has a job at Anfield on matchdays.
As staff, they were all briefed in early March, and before the virus, about the excitement ahead should Liverpool have beaten Crystal Palace at the end of that month and possibly clinch the Premier League that day.
It’s surely unforeseeable that Liverpool won’t win the Premier League, isn’t it?
But what if Klopp’s men start back up with a bit of a wobble?
MORE: Dobra set to sign new deal
While I’m on the subject of the season recommencing, or not, I must admit I do feel many non-league clubs have been rather ‘thrown under the bus’ by the FA Council who have ratified that campaigns at Steps 3-7 are ‘null and void’.
Now, I’m not suggesting it was an easy decision for the FA to make, but I say it was made too early.
If some football does commence in June, the non-league world could have wrapped up their divisions in a month. Players are used to playing Saturday, Tuesday, even Thursday, Saturday. Allow an extra two subs per game – a bit of flexibility for exhausted players.
However and this is the big however. If it is insisted that football has to be played behind closed doors when it starts up again, then that’s non-league done.
Clubs can’t afford to put on a game, pay officials and players (not furloughed by then of course) and be in a good place. It would be financial suicide for many.
But I would like to have seen non-league treated with a bit more reverence rather than leaving the impression with many that the FA has dealt with ‘that problem’.
I was glad to read that Armando Dobra is set to put pen to paper on a new deal at Portman Road.
I first saw him play for Ipswich U18s against Leiston in a Suffolk Premier Cup clash at Felixstowe & Walton last season and, along with Brett McGavin, he was a stand-out Town player.
Certainly he wasn’t afraid to rub some of the more senior Leiston players up the wrong way! I know his former U18 boss Kieron Dyer very much rates him.
I like him alot as well. He’s got that little extra something special and if he channels his tad of feistiness in the right direction, he could have some career ahead.
I hope he’s given a chance, not just tied to a contract. A proper chance. A proper run of games.
MORE: ‘I wanted to prove Town wrong’, says former Blue
We had a ‘virtual quiz’ with the boys from the Bristol last Friday.
It was a right laugh.
Brownie was the quiz master and we all had to nominate a subject for him to make five questions out of.
As you can imagine subjects were ‘mixed’, and included ‘football in the 80s’ to ‘celebrities I’d like to play poker with’!
We all agreed to ‘arrive’ on-line at 8pm. You can guess who was last up!
Yep, while we all appeared in our little windows on screen in a row, only Milky was missing.
We assumed technology had got the better of him, but just as we were about to start, up he popped! But upside down!
Goodness knows what he had done, but it wasn’t worth trying to get him to work out how to turn himself round 180 degrees. He’d have pulled a muscle!
Anyway, he baled out after ‘Greatest Russian Tsars’ round, complaining he didn’t know anything about pop music!
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here