Not for the first time this season Ipswich were on the receiving end of a good thrashing as Crystal Palace stormed to a 5-0 win.

The Tractor Boys were destroyed by Blackpool earlier this season and the obvious connection between both games is that Ian Holloway was managing the winning side in each game. Holloway must enjoy playing Ipswich more than anyone as he has now seen his sides score 11 goals past them this season whilst keeping clean sheets in each game.

Hopefully the former Blackpool boss won't move to another Championship side this season and we will only have to play him once more.

Of course it wouldn't be fair to say that Ipswich are only getting thrashed because Holloway is an expert at beating them. Sheffield Wednesday are a struggling side but they managed to get a 3-0 win at Portman Road and it has to be said that they should have scored more.

Many fans travelled to Crystal Palace in the hope that we would get a decent result there or at least put in a respectable performance. It seems that after the win over Birmingham everyone thought that Mick McCarthy had already turned things around. Unfortunately the problems within the team are too big for McCarthy to sort out right away and the Crystal Palace result highlights that.

The fact of the matter is that Ipswich have a team that are yet again consistently inconsistent. Sometimes they may be up for the games and put in a good shift but a lot of the players are still not giving it their all.

Against Birmingham there were some good performers but there were obviously some players who were still not working as hard as they should be. The team managed to get the desired result even with a few players not at their best when against a team that are in the bottom half of the table but that wasn't the case at Palace. This is because against the top teams you need every player working hard and concentrating otherwise the opposition will exploit the weak links, which is exactly what happened on Tuesday night.

As I have said before we need to wait until January or even February before we can expect McCarthy to fully turn things around. Any points that he picks up between now and then will be fantastic but we must not take them for granted. It is going to be a difficult season where we will see the Ipswich team be completely rebuilt. Any finish above the bottom three will be a good season given the position that the team are currently in.

Personally, I would like to see McCarthy use experienced players to get us safely out of the relegation zone (easier said than done I know!) then work on bringing younger players into the side.

We aren't going up this season so it really doesn't matter where we finish as long as it is outside the relegation zone. Once we know we aren't going down we might as well just work on making the team successful next season and the club have some good youngsters that are worth trying out.

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