Well, on the plus side it seems to have started early so maybe it'll end early as well?

Gladwin, obviously. He'll come into the side with the swagger of a superstar and show us all what we've been missing out on. Dack won't be able to get his place back, he'll fall down the pecking order and end up sold to Charlton for £200,000 in the 19/20 summer window. Or Gladwin would get injured after five minutes and we'd never see him again. Risk/reward. Could put Rothwell in there instead I suppose.

Agreed. Dack is a very important player for us, but we at least have players who have shown they can come in and do some of what he does, if not at the same level or with the same consistency. We literally have nobody who can do what Graham does for us. As soon as he goes off we seem to fall apart.

I very much fear for us if Graham, Dack, Lenihan and/or Mulgrew are out of action. That is the spine of our team ripped out and the source of most of our goals.

Yep. Badly advised, perhaps, but 100% complicit and happy to take part in a greedy, money-making scheme at the expense of this club and its fans. The fact it came crashing down around them and ended up instead as a massive albatross around their neck is just karma. Unfortunately we have had to suffer through it as well.

It's caught at least one former employee's attention...

It's interesting because whilst Lambert is saying he'll be there for the long term, even if Ipswich go down, his transfer business suggests a desperation to stay up this season and a short term approach which would normally see a manager given the boot if and when it doesn't work out. His words don't match his actions and for that reason it wouldn't surprise me if he walks at the end of the season, probably citing lack of funds or support from the owner.

Any blame towards the fans was misguided, imo. It didn't take a genius to see the writing was on the wall with Kean in charge. No amount of applause or positive chanting was going to make up for the manager's total lack of tactical awareness or the deficit in quality across the team which got worse and worse as Kean's tenure went on. Also worth remembering we had the ultimate insult of Kean being given a new and improved contract in November 2011 despite his horrific performance as manager, something he brazenly lied about literally days before it was announced. The people blaming the supporters for our position tended to be those who had mistakenly backed Kean to be some kind of managerial mastermind, and who had celebrated his appointment alongside the sacking of Allardyce. Much like with Ipswich fans and Mick McCarthy, they were unable to admit to their error and so deflected blame everywhere else.

I honestly don't think it had any effect at all. We were crap under Kean long before things got really bad, we were crap when things were really bad, and we were crap for some time afterwards too. The club had been mismanaged to a point where the players had become unprofessional and disillusioned. Some of our better players (eg. Salgado) were frozen out, whilst butt kissers had preferential treatment. In reality, if the atmosphere at Ewood was the big problem we would have seen an improvement in performances and results on the road. Instead we won 6 at home and only 2 times away, which suggests it wasn't the atmosphere at Ewood that was the problem.

I always find this one especially funny, as some of our best results under Kean (Arsenal and Swansea come to mind) came on big protest days. Meanwhile when the protests were stopped and a truce was called with the club during early-mid December 2011, and fans banded together to support the club and temporarily halt protesting inside the stadium, we got limp performances and defeats against Sunderland, WBA and Bolton - in fact our performance against Bolton was so bad that it nearly incited a riot. One of the darkest days of that time period.

I don't think they'll have much choice. They aren't going to tear up their contracts and no Championship club is going to come near any of those players after this season. L1 teams meanwhile probably couldn't come close to matching whatever wages those four have been put on after making the step up. In theory those four players should be a cornerstone of Ipswich's L1 team next year. Obviously not good enough for the Championship but they've all proven themselves good enough at L1 level and are likely going to be at the club no matter what.

Yeah I'm not sure what he's doing in that regard. When he arrived at Ipswich literally one of the first things he said was that the squad has too many loans and that has to stop. Then he brings in even more. Now granted maybe there is only a budget for loan deals at this point, but even so are the likes of Quaner, Will Keane, Bree or 35 year old James Collins going to be enough to keep them up? IMV not even close, so why not just work with what you've got until the end of the season and then start fresh in L1 with some idea of who is reliable and who isn't? Also interesting that Judge came to Ipswich because he didn't want to play out wide for Brentford - and what happens? - he's now playing out wide for Ipswich instead. Keeps trying to drift inside though which leaves his side of the pitch totally exposed. Bizarre.

In fairness their transfer strategy under Hurst was mainly bringing in the best of League 1 & 2, so in theory they should be somewhat well equipped to deal with League 1. As we saw when we went down, it doesn't take massive amounts of investment to make a team competitive in that league, so even if Evans only earmarks £2-3m for the transfer budget it should still give Ipswich a very competitive team for that division. Us and Wigan ran away with it last season on the back of pretty moderate investment. That said we did also keep our best players in Raya, Nyambe, Mulgrew, Lenihan, Graham, Bennett, etc, all of whom were realistically better than League 1 standard. Ipswich don't have anywhere near the same resources in terms of quality players. The way they're bombing out of the Championship this year is proof that they're well below the required standard and in urgent need of sensible permanent transfers. We only just slipped out of the Championship in comparison.

I think it's fair to say Lambert did not do anything to improve Stoke. He obviously wasn't there very long but his brief stint was certainly a failure. Thus far his time at Ipswich has generally been a failure too. There was a noticeable improvement in performances when he first arrived - similar to when he turned up here - but unlike here he did not get any early wins. Ipswich had two games at the start of his tenure where they should have won but ended up drawing. From that point onwards it seems to have just gotten worse and worse. Ipswich are a bit more competitive now than they were under Hurst (match stats alone show a significant improvement in terms of shots, possession, etc) but ultimately results remain poor and that's all that matters. That said, much like TM, Lambert can turn it around if he sticks with Ipswich and gets them promoted back to the Championship next season. If he walks out again then that might be him done for a while, or at least until his agent sweet talks another cheapskate/naive/idiot chairman into giving him another chance.

Cairney is an excellent player at Championship level - when used in the right position. I'm not convinced he has the ability to step up to the PL though.

You can't blame him for taking the job at Stoke, I bet he couldn't believe he was even offered it. Very strange appointment. Ipswich was a hopeless job but yeah, no improvement results wise. I expected a bit better from him down here. He'll need to get it right next season at Ipswich or that might be it for him at any decent level. Then again, if Coyle can fail repeatedly and keep getting offered positions...

Keeping Villa up over multiple seasons was a success in my book. He did well at Wycombe too. Not sure Wolves can be considered a failure, would say pretty average before he was ousted by the agent takeover. Seems to have lost steam over the past few years though. Made some odd career moves - keeps jumping into impossible jobs. We were a difficult one at the time, Stoke almost unsalvageable and Ipswich needing a miracle to survive. He'll need to get Ipswich back up next season to restore his reputation.

Nope. I feel the same way but I don't want him out. I think he deserves and has earned time to prove me wrong, and I'm sure it's the same for anybody else with similar doubts.

The amount of people who genuinely want Mowbray out are so small in number that it genuinely isn't even worth mentioning. Unfortunately as soon as someone posts "Mowbray Out" it somehow morphs into everybody with a legitimate concern or criticism apparently wanting him out as well, although at most only one or two people have actually said so.

He was actually on the bench for that Forest match, our one and only available CB in case of injury to Hoban or Ward. Scary.

Also worth noting our goalkeeper for most of that season was Jason Steele - assume he was injured for this match? Other gone and now forgotten from the 16/17 squad - Adam Henley, Gordon Greer and Stephen Hendrie.

That Lowe/Akpan centre midfield pairing will never be beaten in terms of sheer ineptness. A black hole that sucked the joy and life out of everything on and indeed off the pitch.

Much like Bowyer, I think Mowbray prefers the grafters to the creative players. Probably feels less anxious with a worker bee like Conway on the pitch as opposed to the less predictable Rothwell. Unfortunately this mentality isn't going to get us to where we need to be. Sometimes you need to be brave.

Only one sub from that Forest game is still here: Emnes, Stokes, Joao, Guthrie, Tomlinson, Brown, Fisher As far as the first team, not many left from that either: Raya, Nyambe, Ward, Hoban, Williams, Mahoney, Lowe, Akpan, Feeney, Bennett, Gallagher Fair to say we've seen some significant improvement across the pitch since those dark days.

Ideally, but even so collapsing to a 5-2 defeat against Brentford having been 2-1 up at HT suggests the so-called team spirit at the club isn't as strong as we might think, especially when you consider the 4-1 hammerings we took at Preston and Bristol City. Then there was the no-show in the 3-1 defeat at Wigan, the points we threw away against Birmingham, Boro, Leeds & Norwich, not being able to beat the likes of Rotherham at home... I don't know. There's a lot of question marks there for me. Our goals conceded column does suggest a pretty big problem with our defensive play though. I hesitate to just blame the back four & goalie as I think we also have problems with midfielders giving adequete protection to the full backs and centre backs. Corry Evans has been a constant as a defensive midfielder in a team which has never been able to stop leaking goals. Bennett/Nyambe and Bell/Williams rarely get protection, although to be fair to our wingers I think they're meant to be playing as inside forwards which means they technically wouldn't have the same defensive duties you would associate with out and out wingers or wide midfielders. That's a tactical issue that Mowbray has never addressed and at this point I'm not sure he will ever address it. Nonetheless we've overall conceded more than everyone below us except Rotherham and Ipswich. If we go through a lean spell in front of goal then things could get quite difficult. We should be OK for this season but our defensive issues urgently need to be addressed in the summer.