Since the start of Ipswich Town’s pre-season campaign a lot of fans have been worried about how the team has been performing.

Losses to lower league sides such as Southend and Luton are never good to see but it isn't as bad as some fans have suggested.

Fans were extremely negative before Ipswich’s convincing 3-1 win over West Ham and even now some seem certain that Ipswich are set for another disappointing season.

So many people seem to forget that pre-season is mainly about trying out new tactics and raising fitness levels for the new season. In theory a good pre-season would be one where everyone gets a good amount of game time and the manager gets a good idea about what tactics will or won’t work with his team.

The main point is; having a good pre-season has nothing to do with what the end result of each match is. I would even go as far to say that there is no point in recording the score in pre-season friendlies as the result is that insignificant. A team could well win every pre-season match but if their manager didn’t learn anything new about his side then that team would have had a terrible pre-season in my eyes.

It was disappointing to see many fans making negative comments about the team, management and ownership of club just because of a few bad pre-season results.

After one of the losses, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas was critical of those fans that were being so negative and on his twitter account he told fans to calm down about the results. It was a risky move by JET as criticising the fans is usually a bad move but for me it was pleasing to hear someone attempt to stamp out the unnecessary negativity. JET backed his comments with a good performance against West Ham and hopefully that win will have silenced some of the critics.

However, the win over West Ham was probably the least useful game for Paul Jewell in terms of what he can learn about his side. It seems likely that Jewell chose to mix things up tactically in the matches against Southend and Luton but against West Ham he probably kept things the same. What is also likely is that West Ham chose to try out a few new tactics against Ipswich, which is probably why they weren’t as good as they usually are. Of course it was great to see Ipswich win and it shows that they can pull themselves together even after losing a few games but like I mentioned earlier the result was never important.

I doubt many Spain fans were overly concerned when they saw their team get beat by England in a friendly last season. Instead they got behind their team and watched them get the results in the games where the results matter. Hopefully every Ipswich fan will do the same and get behind the team even if they do not believe in the team or the manager.

Personally, I have my doubts as to whether Ipswich will challenge for promotion this season as there are some really good teams in The Championship this season but I will always get behind the team.

 

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