The current trend amongst managers, officials and fans is to react to a Carling Cup defeat by pointing out that it’s a pointless cup. So here goes. “God, what a pointless cup”. Yes that certainly showed them and no mistake.
The truth of the matter is that we put out our best available XI and were beaten by a better team. We deserved to go out by dint of not being as good as Middlesbrough on the night and to be fair the Carling Cup is a good competition giving smaller teams the chance to host big ones (see Exeter V Liverpool) that has served us well over the years.
So what went wrong? Some say we didn’t seem up for it, lacked fitness. Others point out how Middlesbrough played us at our own game, pressed us and didn’t give us a moments peace. Tactically, it seems, they got the measure of us. All we can do is hope and pray that the Ipswich’s outnumber the Middlesbroughs in the Championship or that we somehow develop a crafty Plan B for when the “Score lots of goals” tactic isn’t working.
Either way we need to prove on Saturday, at Brighton, that the Ipswich result wasn’t a flash in the pan and give them a bloody good game – If only to show a certain striker that we’re over him.