IPSWICH TOWN 4 CITY 0
League Division 1
8th December 1979
attendance 18,221
Scorers Mills(7), Gates(12, 15 & 53)
ref J Martin
City Corrigan, Ranson, Power, Bennett, Booth, Caton, Henry, Robinson, Daley, Viljoen, Palmer – sub Shinton(unused)
Ipswich Sivell, Burley, Butcher, Mills, Thijssen, Osman, Beattie, Wark, Muhren, Mariner, Gates – used sub McCall
MATCH REPORT PUBLISHED IN THE CITY PROGRAMME 20TH APRIL 1981
City spent the afternoon chasing the shadow of diminutive Gates and didn’t do it very successfully as the Ipswich scoring ace hit a hat-trick after Mills had started the battering of the Blues very early.
City were tormented by Gates and the gifted Dutchmen, Thijssen and particularly Muhren, pierced them far too easily. The offside trap was employed but flopped and it was fortunate for the Blues that lpswich’s electrifying early play blew a fuse.
Tony Henry crashed a late shot against the bar from 30 yards. Lesser long-range shots from Paul Power and Colin Viljoen were easily handled by Sivell.
Corrigan stood between the Blues and a heavier defeat, for Ipswich also had an effort disallowed when Mills drove home a free kick, which should have been indirect.
“l won’t criticise my team for lack of effort. Two of the goals were offside” said City team manager: Malcolm Allison later.
FROM MALCOLM ALLISON’S PROGRAMME NOTES PUBLISHED IN THE CITY PROGRAMME 15TH DECEMBER 1979
To those people who believe that I may have spent a large part of this week blowing my top about the beating we took at Ipswich last Saturday let me reveal that l did not feel any worthwhile purpose could be served by tearing into the players over what happened. I’ll admit that we were terrible and were punished heavily for some very early mistakes, but at no time were the team guilty of slacking, they worked hard throughout an unfortunate afternoon and were never guilty of throwing in the towel.
We were two goals down by the 15th minute, both Ipswich efforts being scored in the space of two minutes, and this left the City side very tense and edgy in everything they did. We gave the ball away far too much and it was the fact of being under the cosh in front of fans baying with encouragement from the home team that in those circumstances we never revived or showed signs of reviving.
It’s no good for me to have a go at the players for what happened. The task that faces me is to continue the hard work at ironing out the wrinkles which have re-appeared in our play. Our form goes up and down too much and we have to find a level very quickly.
lt doesn’t matter how much hard work we input into a match, it is all negated if we give the ball away as much as we did at Ipswich. I wasn’t exactly pleased with the standard of our passing against Wolves, either, when we lost at home a fortnight ago by a 2-3 margin. But the repair work left to me is in training and not in lashing the players with my
tongue.
lf they stop working,”don’t do their running, try to hide or take the easy way out, then they’ll hear me and pay the penalty for that approach. But, because we carry a lot of youth and are still working hard on the blend to be successful consistently, we are suffering from a sudden turn in the results against us. We have become over anxious, which is a fault frequently found in ‘ teams without extensive experience…