Newsletter #291

First of all, thanks to all for your messages of congratulation and lastly, thanks to Kieran for stepping in at fairly short notice to take over MCIVTA and have his Monday and Thursday evenings made a little livelier!

This issue sees an important letter to Gio which is the culmination of an excellent communal effort on the part of Internet Blues, mainly on BlueView. Clive Tysoe has sent details of how you can make your contribution, so please consider dwonloading the letter (or mailing Clive) and mailing it off to our star player. Other than that, we have 3 (yes 3!) match reports, player of the month (February) and an appeal for players for the Internet game at Valley Parade – please support Mark and turn up, either with kit or vocal support! The only news of note is that the Reading game has been switched to Saturday due to the fact that it has no impact on anything whatsoever!

MATCH REPORT – ‘LIVE’

IPSWICH TOWN vs MANCHESTER CITY, Tuesday 22nd April 1997

A slightly better performance than on Saturday, if only from the team and not the referee! Where do they find these people? I lost count of how many bookings we had, the silliest of which was probably for Kinkladze after he kicked the ball vaguely goalwards despite being offside. He still missed though.

I missed the team announcement as we were still in the Drum and Monkey watching a video of past City games on the large screen, and cheering those 5 goals against United just as loudly as the first time we saw them!

Heaney and Crooks were playing, with Rösler injured and Kernaghan not playing (injured or dropped?) but still no Tommy Wright. Apparently Clough, Whitley and Kav were on the bench.

City started quite brightly against an in-form Ipswich team. Atkinson hit the bar with a thumping header that deserved better early on, but there wasn’t too much goalmouth action from either side. The difference in pace between us and them going forward was clearly apparent though, especially as every time Heaney got the ball he stopped running and passed it inside. I thought this boy was supposed to be a winger? Atkinson tried hard and was fairly effective in the air, but still looks a yard (or 10) too slow. For Ipswich, their big number 10 (Scowcroft) caused a few problems as he was bigger and faster than anyone in our defence. Buzzer ran quite well and should have done better with a chance about half way through the first half – he was way offside when the ball was passed to him but who cares? It looked for most of the first half as if a goal either way was going to settle the game, and just before half time it came. Symons (I think) upended Scowcroft in the box completely unnecessarily and the penalty was duly given. I couldn’t tell you who took it or if Margetson got anywhere near it, as I had my head in my hands bemoaning our habit of self-destructing.

The second half was a bit more exciting, if only because Scowcroft was being heckled so much for being a cheat for continually diving if anyone so much as looked at him. Unluckily for him he spent a lot of the second half right in front of where we were all sitting. The ref gave some crazy decisions against us but finally booked Scowcroft for being too big and blond, and should have sent him off for scything into the back of Kit Symons. Kinkladze did his best but with no-one moving for him or wanting the ball there weren’t many options for him. My favourite moment of the game was when Brightwell left a ball on the edge of the area à la Kernaghan against QPR, only for the Ipswich forward to round Margetson and shoot well wide of the empty net. City couldn’t have done it better themselves. Kav came on for the largely ineffectual Heaney and ran about a lot – the last five minutes were probably the most exciting of the match once we had someone with a bit of pace on the field. Still it wasn’t to be.

Final Score: Ipswich 1 City 0

Ratings – everyone was pretty clueless so I don’t think I’ll bother giving them scores. Brannan looked fairly solid, Kinkladze and Buzzer both tried hard without having too much to show for it. McGoldrick and Horlock were passing the ball around the way Lomas used to do (groan), Atkinson was either too slow or just couldn’t be arsed although his passing later on was very promising. We don’t have anyone in midfield who can win the ball back – and even if we did we don’t have anyone up front who can score goals. We had a friend with us who hasn’t been to a game since Heysel – on this type of performance and result, it could be another 12 years before he bothers going to another one. It’s all very well playing out the “meaningless” games ’til the end of the season, but while people are still paying to see them play the least they could do is try and provide some entertainment.

Roll on Norwich on Friday…!

MATCH REPORT – ‘LIVE’

IPSWICH TOWN vs. MANCHESTER CITY, Tuesday 22nd April 1997

The fixture planners haven’t been very kind to us regarding this week, have they? It’s OK for those who can stay in East Anglia for a few days (like the players) but two trips of this distance for evening matches in one week tests even the most loyal fans. However, even with our chances of the play-offs insignificant and a run of poor form recently, we still took around 1,000 fans to Portman Road (didn’t use our full allocation of tickets though).

So, how was the team changed from the one which capitulated embarrassingly to QPR on Saturday? Well, fans’ scapegoat Alan Kernaghan was dropped in favour of Lee Crooks and the injured Uwe R