The new Ipswich owner is an arms dealer billionaire. I don't think he's worried about a few thousand supporters staying away from a handful of matches.Originally Posted by seanfhear
You can't blame Keane for Shane Supple packing it in.
Owen Garvan being dropped is a big surprise alright. I'll give you that.
Billy Clarke wasn't sold, he was released after spending about 3 years going out on loan all the time. Was hardly an established world beater in the Ipswich team.
I wasn't talking about Keane as such giving Irish lads a chance (although he has done), I was talking about Ipswich in general.
He didn't blame Keane to be fair, he used the qualifier 'not necessarily Keane's fault'. I personally think it was probably more than just a coincidence that he happened to retire under his management and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Keane was a factor in his retirement.
I agree with all of this - they have lost less games than the 5 or 6 teams above them in the table.He's drawn 5 of his last 7 games and one of those defeats was to Newcastle, the other was to a Barnsley winner 6 minutes into injury time. They were 3-2 up at Doncaster when Quinton Fortune scored a very rare goal with 5 minutes remaining, 3-1 up at Sheff Utd until they got an equaliser in injury time, and then they conceded an injury time equaliser against Watford on Tuesday.
If football was 80 minutes long he'd be up at the playoff places!!
As a player at Manchester United, he and the players around him worked their socks off for the 90 minutes plus 7 or 8 minutes injury time and were renowned for getting late goals. His luck has just turned as a manager but I've no doubt he will turn things around.
Too many draws and too many goals conceded late. They've only lost 2 games more than Middlesborough. I hope he gets his team in order cause I always liked Ipswich and they always gave Irish lads a chance.
The fans at Ipswich seem to be really getting behind the team and manager now - they gave the team a standing ovation at the end of their last game (Watford) and were chanting Keane's name through out the game as well.
If this was the stock market, I'd say that ITFC is an undervalued stock and a screaming good buy !!!
I hope RMK is successful at Ipswich - for me at least, keeping track of it is certainly a nice mindless distraction
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder
I have never been a big Keane fan but I respect him on football and his knowledge. Getting Sunderland from bottom of the table to top of the Championship, well has any other manager every done that, and I don't mean after the first round of games but after 6 rounds of games. It was a great achievement.
Likewise at Ipswich you have people writing Keane off. But if Ipswich jump up the table and are in contention for the Premiership, some of the people writing him off will be wearing Ipswich jerseys and telling everyone how they always believed in Keane, just as with Sunderland. When they hit a bad patch the same fans will be writing him off again and calling for his head.
They should have been there earlier. They could have done plenty of R 'n' R in Japan along with football training at world class facilities. There's some great hot springs in Japan for relaxing in.
I disagree with flying to Japan, and then flying another 10 hours halfway across the Pacific to laze about in a hotel for a week, just cause Mick's friend said it was a nice place.
The German team would never do something like that. Maybe that's why they keep getting so far with mostly average players.
Roy Keane was an obsessive professional, this is why he became such a world class player, even though he was still playing for Cobh Ramblers aged 19. He worked his arse off to get where he did. And then he is at the World Cup, a seriously weak World Cup I might add, and the Irish team's main form of preparation involves a week of golf in a resort. Of course he went mental...
Me! Your the guy who thinks its a good plan to start a world cup with a rest
I'd say that's the norm rather then running the players into the ground at the end of a long season. Light training, team bonding and then down to serious business in Japan for the week before the first game.Me! Your the guy who thinks its a good plan to start a world cup with a rest
All getting very groundhog day here mind.....
About the same as Brazil's preparations.
That's a good point actually. They're dropped points late in a few games that'd have them higher than they are.
James Lawton wrote a good piece on Keane in today's Indo.
Eh, isn't he a conference organiser? That's his official job anyway, but am not sure if you can get that rich from conferences.
I've read Ferguson say that by April, Man Utd's training consists of light ball work - they have played and have to play so many games that there's no point doing any fitness training. Keane never walked out of that. But, hey, maybe those guys have no idea how to prepare for a league title run-in and the later stages of the Champions League.Me! Your the guy who thinks its a good plan to start a world cup with a rest
You can't spell failure without FAI
Keane will come good
Exactly. The heavy training in soccer, etc is usually before and during the winter. After that you just need a bit to tick over otherwise you burn out or get injured.
Heavy training two weeks before a major competition? It's a bit late then.
I'd say at the end of a long hard season, most professional soccer player's are ready to collapse and the last thing they need is more heavy training sessions or indeed any type of difficult training session.
Everyone needs a break now and again.
keane will improve ipswich...they have drawn more games than they have lost now,they are on the way to becoming hard to beat and once they start to close games out they will move up the table,i'd fancy them to finish around mid table
Only in the Med would "presidents" look to get rid of a coach as soon as the first few results don't go their way. RK came in late in the season, had a number of players who were not up to it and had to get the structures in order as well as get in the staff. I'm not a fan of RK but he will probably turn the club into a mid-table side by the turn of the New Year and push for a play-off spot in March. He doesn't have the same resources available for him as he did at Sundireland, despite his bosses lucrative business (he's the preferred Western Europe agent for Rosboronexport - the Russian state arms exporter) but he'll get it right.
Thanks for that, didn't know.
They might just bump Roy off rather than sack him. It would be easier than telling him he is sacked any way.
All of above is a joke in case anyone dangerous is reading it.
Those players that 'weren't up to it' had Ipswich comfortably midtable in a far better position then they are now under Jim Magilton who's doing alright at QPR now. Keane was backed with as much as if not more then he was at Sunderland money wise during the summer. Much as I'm not one to believe in knee jerk sackings the excuses being made for him that wouldn't be made for anyone else stagger me to be honest. It looks like his job is safe anyway so we'll see how the season pans out but there's no denying he's been a disaster so far.
It might not be as impressive a timeline but Keane's time at Sunderland does have comparisons with Kevin Keegan's first term as manager of Newcastle. In February 1992 He took over a team second from bottom of the old 2nd division. He helped them avoid relegation that season and then walked away with the championship the following season (with David Kelly as top scorer). They then had a good run in the premier league (and should have won the title in 1996) but ultimately Keegan didn't prove himself at the highest level.
We will postpone judgment on RMK for a few years yet.
"There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet" - Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
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