Bit of a wake up call for anyone at the club who thought we were okay because of the opening day result. 2 games and 4 conceded already under a manager known for being defensively solid. Worried.

Difficult to forget Dack, Butterworth and certain others having a laugh and congratulating Fulham after they dealt us our worst ever home defeat. It'll always stick in the craw for me and prove that the attitude was not right at the club under TM. With that said, it's obviously a shame how things ended up for Dack. Sometimes it isn't meant to be. If his body is struggling after injuries I'm not sure League 2 is going to help much, but good luck to him anyway.

Good luck Szmods, a well deserved move and it'll be interesting to see how he adapts to McKenna's way of playing. I think he could thrive there. Lad gave his all whilst he was here, proved a lot of people wrong and I wish him all the best. Without him we'd be at the beginning of a League 1 campaign now. As far as the money is concerned, will have to see how the court case goes. No point anticipating any spending until we know the lay of the land for the immediate future.

He does still look pretty sharp, but yeah, I'd give him a good 60-65 mins at least. This is basically a training game, pretty low risk. Just to likely to get injured in actual training.

Nah, needs the minutes after being left out for essentially the entire of pre-season.

Steady now.

Tbf his shambolic tenure at Birmingham helped keep us up last season, so swings and roundabouts.

Honestly doubt it would even enter his mind. Colchester fans might be a little jealous of Ipswich's success, but that's as far as it goes. It'd be the equivalent of a rivalry between Rovers and Accrington, or Rochdale. Basically irrelevant to players and fans alike.

Lol, mate, I'm from Ipswich and I can assure you not a single person would care that he played for Colchester.

Can't grumble with an opening day win. New signings up top looking good. Not convinced by the usual suspects who were still suspect at various points. Special shout out to Pears who seems desperate to prove why he needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Bizarre game really. First 30 minutes we were comfortable, looking good. Next 40 minutes either side of the break we were absolutely dire - completely lost momentum and confidence. The pressure grew and grew until the inevitable equaliser. Fair play to Eustace, though, his triple sub changed the game in our favour and our superior quality shone through in the end. Derby's defending was abysmal, though - in the sense it was non-existent. Conceding a second was annoying, but further proof we need a new goalkeeper and pressure on Waggott, Suhail and Gestede to deliver on that. Will be gutting when Sammie leaves. What a player he's turned out to be for us.

Another season of averaging conceding two goals a game ahead, then. Was hoping with Eustace we'd at least leave that behind, as he's supposed to be good at keeping it tight at the back. Granted with Pears in goal that's arguably an impossible task, but then we need to stop pissing about with haggling on goalkeepers and just get someone in.

Wow, from 40 minutes of despair to being 4-1 up... utterly bizarre. Derby's defending though, WTF. If people think we're going down then Derby should just be given one of the relegation spots right now because they'll be gone long before us.

Wow, all of that work to equalise and then throw it away almost instantly 🤣 does that mean another 20 minutes of sitting back and soaking up pressure now?

As I said, inevitable. We look fucking atrocious out there.

This Attack Vs Defence thing is getting old. We're at home ffs.

Not sure what's happened after the 30 minute mark, but an equaliser is looking inevitable at this point. We really need to sort ourselves out. This entire spell of pressure came from a ridiculously poor pass from Carter under no real pressure.

Great build up and a well deserved goal. We've been well on top so far.

Imagine Eustace will be thrilled with Waggott mandating a top half finish, whilst he still considers himself minimum five players short of having a decent squad. Although I'd guess the 'top half finish' comment is just fan appeasement after the backlash last year when he claimed there was no pressure on results and we were just a development club. Still, puts some unnecessary pressure on Eustace where JDT had none. If he genuinely didn't do any due diligence before taking the job he's getting a crash course on what it entails now.

Decided to purchase the PSVR2 as it was recently on sale at a heavily discounted price. I originally got a PS5 last year expecting to get the PSVR2 to go with it, as I really enjoyed the original PSVR. Was pretty disappointed with the utter lack of backward compatibility, but what can you do. In fairness the design is totally different to the original PSVR, so that makes backwards compatibility hugely difficult. Basically means the developers would need to redevelop the game and rerelease on PS5 to a very small and niche audience. Highly unlikely to be worth the effort. Some of the studios don't even exist anymore. Ultimately didn't grab the PSVR2 immediately due to lack of games and high price, but the price reduction makes it a much more enticing purchase. Also, Sony have coincided the PSVR2 price drop with PC (Steam VR) compatibility, which is great. Although currently I'd only potentially be able to run it on my laptop, if it's compatible. It has an RTX 2070 - desktop versions of this GPU all support VirtualLink, a failed standard which was phased out in 2020. PSVR2 headset uses VirtualLink natively though, so if the laptop RTX 2070 supports VirtualLink that would be grand. Impossible to know if the laptop version of this GPU will support VL. It does have a Mini DisplayPort though, so assuming it's at least 1.4 then I should be able to use an adapter to connect the headset. Realistically to get the best of the headset it'll be a new PC with at least a RTX 4070 GPU. My current PC is now 7 years old so it's probably about time to upgrade anyway. The old GTX 1070 has done an admirable job. Expensive as hell to upgrade these days though :')

Risky tactic as at that point they won't be the only vultures circling, I'd wager. Still, I understand their stance if we agreed a fee and then changed our minds. Wouldn't be a good look to just agree to that and let everyone know that they're a pushover. It I were them I'd be looking elsewhere at this point. Maybe join the lottery and buy a ticket if we get desperate and end up flogging Sammie for a discount price.

The suggestion on the Ipswich side is a bit different to here. Basically that Ipswich were given an acceptable amount for Szmodics by Rovers, that was submitted, but then we decided to ask for more. Now there's a standoff because Ipswich feels it would set a bad precedent to give in to additional demands after an agreement was verbally struck, whilst Rovers aren't budging either. No idea if there's any truth to the above, just what Ipswich fans seem to believe.

He'd be correct in first instance.

Just what the fans and squad need to hear two days before the season starts. Basically saying 50% of the starting eleven are inadequate. I don't disagree, we're relying on the likes of Brittain, Hedges and Hyam for senior leadership ffs, but still. Going to be a brutal season if the manager is already getting his excuses in before a competitive ball has been kicked. Same as last season under JDT, albeit we inexplicably muddled through to November before falling apart last year.

Did he pay no attention to what was going on at the club before arriving? I can understand if he'd just come in after Mowbray, who got a fair amount of latitude and budget, but after all of the very public nonsense that went on under JDT and the very public court case the owners are involved in? JDT tried to resign when he realised he'd been lied to. Lambert was smart enough to include a break clause so that they couldn't trap him, as they did JDT last season. One assumes Eustace had no such out clause, so will he go down with the ship or try to escape before it sinks?

Did have a despairing chuckle earlier reading an Ipswich forum, thread on Szmodics transfer dragging, and someone posting "Just Waggott and Suhail being Waggott and Suhail". Lol. Yeah, indeed.