Thoughts For The Season.

#ANewEra – The term couldn’t be better suited to what lies ahead for the next 12 months as a town fan. As a 21 year old, ready to hit 22, I cannot really claim about any glory days as a fan. The near misses in the play-offs against the Hammers in 2004 and 2005 were arguably the better times over the last 16 years I’ve followed town, with the play-offs in May 2015 being sandwiched between the stagnation that myself and many of our fans have had to endure in this forever increasingly difficult league.

I don’t want to touch too much on Paul Hurst’s predecessor, but this summer transfer window and the shake-up are just what the club needed. The signings of Edwards and Harrison for a combined fee of £1.45m is a breath of fresh air. Hungry lower league players ready to make a step up, and both of whom have already caught the eye, rather than the expected loans and freebies that we were so used to just filling a round hole as a square peg.

I read Hurst’s interview with Stuart Watson earlier and (yes I’m going to say it again) it was another breath of fresh air. No nonsense, says it exactly how it is, but all within the best interest of fans, players and his staff. He talked about his family and his upbringing and how its all implemented his career and how he does what he does now. Did we get that with the previous man in charge? Maybe a little bit to being with.

Expectations are still yet to be set by town fans, however once again everyone and their dog has written us off to go down. The same being said for Hurst’s previous side Shrewsbury last season, and look what happened? Do I expect an immediate transition? No, but I do expect to see things fit into place over the course of the season. Realistically, I can’t see us advancing any further than last seasons dead centre finish of 12th, but I am renowned for being a pessimist. My heart will go with a top 10 finish, but my head is saying around the 15th mark. This season will be the foundation for the next couple of years I hope and give or take in 12 months time I may have the confidence to throw ourselves in the mix for a top 6 finish.

Hurst has everyone behind him, and after venting my frustration at Mr Evans last August for raising the Season Ticket Prices, I put my money where my mouth was a purchased my first Season Ticket in 8 years for this upcoming season, although the departure of McCarthy was a huge pull factor. Like I astarted this piece, #ANewEra is here at Portman Road, and although it may not be an immediate transformation, I for one am looking forward to it.

Follow on twitter - @_Kieranbleaz

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🗓 FIXTURES | AUGUST

The new season starts this weekend, and more importantly, so does #ANewEra at Town.

As we’ve done in previous seasons we want your points predictions for the month which will feature as part of the @BlueMondayITFC podcast.

Get involved over on twitter - https://twitter.com/ITFC_bible/status/1023959281178214402

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End of 2017 Points Projection: Some thoughts.

So we are at the end of 2017 and this is how the points projection is looking. It’s very clear that things are sadly levelling off to the normal finishing position of somewhere between 12th - 9th position (if I was to guess). The average points per game have dipped below 1.5, now at 1.44, this sees a finishing points total of about 66 which is outside of the 10 year average for getting into the playoffs (73.6pts). After that initial burst of 4 wins and then a bit of a win-lose-win-lose pattern it seems to have flatlined to no real consistency. There have been good wins against the top teams such as Derby, and then some less than convincing losses, such as Derby on the return fixture!

The midfield injury nightmare doesn’t help, and the potential of losing Adam Webster for some time too is just another potential nail in the coffin for this season. There were high hopes that maybe this could be another underdog season, but right now if that was to happen it would be nothing short of a miracle. And don’t get me wrong, I’ll be over the moon if that happens, however, I just don’t see how this team can reverse its fortune having started so well.

So what do I see happening in 2018? Well, January signings need to be made in order to bolster the sparse midfield. It seems very likely this will happen, but as ever it will be the loan market. I have no problem with this, however, at this point in the season, I do wonder if loan players have the same desire to perform as well as they would over the course of a full season loan, especially at a team that probably isn’t going to be pushing for promotion. I may well be very wrong, this is just my opinion with some players I’ve seen come in on loan at various clubs. But you know what, as long as we don’t get another Leon Best character we probably won’t do too bad in finding the right players.

Ramble over. I want to see the team somehow work some magic in the New Year and go on a great run to have a push for the playoffs but ultimately I think the season will have run out of steam but the end of February and the hunt for a new manager will be well underway. If the magic does happen though, we can expect to see Mick get another 2-year deal I’m sure!

Marcus Evans

Sadly today’s ‘from the owner’ column (definitely not an interview as touted by the club) doesn’t bring much more confidence to how things can improve from where the club is at. I won’t be the only one who hoped there would actually be some suitable January signings made, most notably the purchase (not loan!) of a proven goal scorer, but as point 5 of ME’s ‘5 point plan’ says, he will continue* to invest in young players to develop. That to me reads as if there will be more loans of younger Premier League players and then the very rare bit of good business from the lower leagues, to improve and then sell on again. Our own home grown players don’t get the time, so I don’t see how this plan is any better.

We are just under 3 hours away from tonights match against Bristol City who are on a run of 4 games and 4 losses, but I dread that tonight will be a game they are going into knowing they can get something from it based on the way Town set up at home. Scared to attack, lacking in creativity and playing some players who really shouldn’t be anywhere near the team. For me there needs to be a clear out, there needs to be a new system and there needs to be a couple of strikers who actually score goal rather than spending most of their time defending! Earlier this season I posted on twitter a 5-3-2/ 3-5-2 (depending on how you look at it) set up that meant we would be more attacking from the wings, but have the solid defence of 3 CBs, whether that’s Berra/Webster/Chambers or any other combination based on the possibility that Webster may be sold or Berra doesn’t take a new contract at Town. We have the players to make that formation work, so why doesn’t Mick try it out? I think he’s done it once but then freaked out that we let a goal in early.

I want to come back home later of the back of a convincing win, but more importantly, having watch the team play with some style and passion. Right now the team just seem to be going through the motions and not really putting their all into the matches. The fans want to see them try, take players on, play the ball forward and not rely on the goal keeper from being the star man match after match. Getting Sears upfront to me is still a priority, have someone like Didz or Varney to play the Murphy role of holding it up or knocking it down to him. He has the pace that we desperately need to get round defenders. I am dreaming with this of course, Mick has broken Sears now and won’t try to fix him.

Let’s see what 9.45pm brings, but I fear at best a draw, and further calls for McCarthy’s head. A loss today ahead of a tough trip to QPR on Monday where a draw is the most we can expect out of that, then I really think Marcus Evans needs to stop ‘standing by his man’ and start looking to make changes now so the future of this club can start to become clearer. Right now, it’s as foggy as it is outside at the moment. At least that will cover some of the poor football we will most likely see tonight at Portman Road.


*come on Marcus, there’s been hardly any of this recently!

Website updates before the new season starts…

We’ve really not been utilising this site as well as we could have, but this is purely down to how well everything works using the ITFC Bible twitter page. It’s great for getting content our quickly, engaging with fellow fans and sharing their content as well.

However with the new season just round the corner we thought that it would be good to add a couple of new pages to the site. They are…

- Squad numbers
- Fixtures
- League table

Handy, right?

And that is about it. We will try and get a season preview up before next weekend, however that may not happen! But be sure to keep following on Twitter for the most frequent updates. We are nearly at 3,000 followers now, it’s hard to believe how quickly things have grown. Thank you for getting involved!

If you want to add any content to our website, you can do. It’s really easy, just submit your musings here (it can be anonymous too!) and we’ll publish it on the site within a couple of days and promote it via our social channels.

Roll on the new season!