Watching Ipswich is like a box of chocolate’s - you never know what your going to get. After a couple of good performances away from home (not quite Turkish Delight) it was back to dark chocolate with a marzipan centre at Portman Road. Forest had been on a bad run, they hadn’t scored a goal since November 19th (seven games, all loses). Town were the visitor’s at the City Ground that day so it seemed inevitable that they would score at Portman Road.
With Ibrahima Sonko serving a one match ban after picking up his 5th booking of the season at Reading we were down to Damien Delaney and Ívar Ingimarsson at centre half, they certainly do not go together like peas and carrots! We conceded after just 5 minutes, Marcus Tudgay who ironically scored Forest’s last goal (and who always seems to score against us) nipped in ahead of an indecisive Ingimarsson to slot the ball past Arran Lee-Barrett. Oh how we missed Lieutenant Dan (Collins). I had bad vibes, it was all too easy for the visitors, they went two nil up in the 26th minute, this time Delaney’s poor headed clearance aimed for Aaron Cresswell was picked up by Garath McCleary who went on to score. JET hit the bar for the second game running and Daryl Murphy spurned a couple of good chances before half time, he certainly wasn’t wearing his magic shoes. If only we had Bubba (aka Demba Ba) in our team!
Ipswich got themselves a lifeline 30 minutes into the second half when JET was brought down in the box, Grant Leadbitter converted the subsequent penalty past the tight wearing keeper Lee Camp. The home crowd were lifted but this was very short lived as Tudgay scored Nottingham’s third goal just 3 minutes later with a header to seal the fate of the blues.
Another unhappy day at “Forstress Portman Road” was made worse with the news in the morning that former first team coach Gary Ablett had passed away the previous day after a long illness. He was signed by Roy Keane in 2010 and soon after his appointment was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, there was a minutes applause before the kickoff in his memory.
Following this poor performance Paul Jewell is once again under pressure as this defeat leaves us just three points above the drop zone. It will be interesting to see A, how he is backed in the January transfer window and B, what calibre of players he is able to attract (either permanent or on loan) to a team which continues to under achieve. There are plenty of people calling for his head almost a year to the day that Keane was shown the door following a home defeat against …………………. Nottingham Forest.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
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| Forest Slump! |
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