DE.

Sunderland down to ten. An opening day nightmare.

Sunderland with one good half, one horrendous half... where have I seen this before?

https://streamin.me/v/b432ca8d Hirst's goal for anyone curious.

Sunderland all over the place now. Can see this ending 3 or 4-0 at this rate.

Horrific defending again from Sunderland, smart run from hirst though and absolutely buried it.

Sunderland have absolutely collapsed here mentally.

2-0 - George Hirst. Wow. Disaster for Tone.

He's been falling over repeatedly, think the ref got wise to it pretty quick.

1-0 Ipswich... Lol. Sunderland's defence really is poor.

Why do you think so? Nixon has been the only one saying this, but I haven't seen any evidence of it, and no Ipswich fans are anticipating big signings. They had a big budget for League 1, but then so did we.

Seems so, maybe nerves as it was a complete air kick, and he's had the fewest touches in the first 30 minutes or so. Granted Ipswich have spent most of it defending. had a few decent chances though, Sunderland looking dodgy in defence in the rare instances they've been threatened. From what I've read Evans is out until the new year with a long-term injury, so won't be back for some time. Lots of domination from Sunderland but little threat so far. Set pieces been poor, but no surprise there. With that said they should be 1-0 up, that Bellingham miss was a shocker.

Dack and Evans shown on camera watching on. The dream team back together. Evans is injured, unsurprisingly.

And there's the George Hirst we all know so well.

Early candidate for miss of the season there from the younger Bellingham.

You look at Ipswich's side and there's a lot of players there who are unproven in this league, have been relegated from the Championship or transferred from the Championship to League 1 last season. Think the hype around Ipswich might be a bit much, if they finish mid-table they'll have done well with their current squad imo. They look incredibly nervous every time Sunderland come forward.

Strong start from Sunderland, Ipswich looking a bit overwhelmed, playing very defensively.

No matter what happens with QPR, I'm sure everyone except QPR fans would agree his appointment was worth it just for this video. It's like a scene from a footballing version of The Office.

Ultimately you can't have a midfield consisting solely of technical players in this league. You need at least one person willing to do the dirty work and cover ground, which is where Travis and Tronstad are vital. People sometimes underestimate Travis' technical ability as well. He may not be on Wharton or Buckley's level in that regard, but he is capable of playing some very good passes and occasionally has a decent strike on him. This gives us an extra dimension if Travis is able to get further up the pitch and leave Tronstad further back to tidy up and keep the defensive side steady. Suggestions that Travis isn't a Championship level player and comparing him to Lowe (and yes, I've seen that on here from a couple of people and in other places) are absolutely absurd in my view. In terms of JDT and Travis' relationship, there has been little outside of dubious ITK posts on here to suggest there's any major problem. As captain I'm sure Travis has his say, and maybe he has butted heads with JDT on occasion, but I don't think it's a bad thing for the more influential players to make their voices heard - as long as they're generally on board with the manager's ideas. If Travis wasn't then he'd be out the door like Dack was. JDT doesn't suffer fools, and as you say, if he and Travis were having as much of a problem with each other as people claim I doubt Travis would be starting, let alone as captain. I think it's mostly nonsense from people who seem to want Travis out of the club for whatever reason.

Wharton has come in and shown the potential that a lot of people were expecting from Buckley. There are times when Wharton makes mistakes, as younger footballers do, but at the same time he'll show multiple times a game why he's rated so highly. Buckley has shown glimpses on occasion but nowhere near as often as Wharton, and in many games feels like a passenger, whereas Wharton is always trying to get involved and get something started even if things aren't coming off for him. I don't think it's a lack of talent with Buckley, but perhaps a mentality issue that needs to be improved upon if he's going to really push on. Talk of Travis not being needed when we have 4/5 midfielders ignores the fact that those midfielders aren't interchangable. Each has a different skillset and Travis has qualities that the others don't possess, and don't need to possess. Don't get me wrong, Travis can have and has had some poor games, but a lot of that seems to stem from the fatigue of the box-to-box role he's usually asked to play. We don't need to get rid of Travis, we just need a good rotational option available to bring into the first team if Travis' form dips or he's struggling with tiredness, particularly during the Saturday/midweek/Saturday periods of the season.

Thought Leicester looked pretty dangerous going forward, but were giving Coventry a lot of space in the middle of the park and were all at sea at times defensively. Can certainly see teams with better forward lines punishing them if they don't tighten up. No idea what Coventry were doing in the final few minutes. Instead of getting it into the box they just passed it around at the edge of the area until they lost possession. I guess that's the modern way of playing but it wasn't effective in the slightest. Poor debut for Simms, going to need to improve tenfold if he has any chance of justifying the £8m spent on him.

Arguing with the officials I think.

Tbf we rarely won our first game of the season under Mowbray. Think we managed it once in his final season. We even lost our opening League 1 game against Southend.

Give the man the Presidency of the States already. Surely can't do any worse.

I think they're in a similar situation to us, in terms of having owners the majority of the fans (on the forums at least) dislike. That tends to place a dark cloud over everything else.

If we managed that I think we'd be in at least as good of a position as last season to make a push for a playoff spot. Over to the recruitment team to pull a couple of rabbits out of the hat.