Preview: Town – Cardiff
By Aston
March 9 2010
Town take on Cardiff at Portman Road tonight, looking to move back away from the relegation zone following Saturday’s defeat against Blackpool.
Town will be missing Grant Leadbitter after he picked up his 10th yellow card of the season on Saturday. Leadbitter could be replaced by Jack Colback in the centre of midfield with the left back role likely to go to either Shane O'Connor or David Wright.
Town manager Roy Keane: "We need to be more ruthless, be more nasty, and when I say we're "too nice," I mean in terms of looking at all the teams around us. People will look at Ipswich and see that they haven't been in this situation, in terms of fighting for their lives in the Championship.
"It's crunch time, without a shadow of a doubt.
"Its about character. We've been tip-toeing around situations over the last few months.
"You look at all the teams down there. People will probably say that the biggest question mark will be over Ipswich.
"People will say the Crystal Palaces will get out of it, Sheffield Wednesday will dig themselves out of it, but will Ipswich dig themselves out of it? We'll find out, we've thrown away silly points, so we deserve to be where we are,
"We should be doing better, but I would have thought that even if we were in mid-table at this stage of the season.
"We still have enough games to get up the table,"
The Bluebirds will be missing, Peter Whittingham, Mark Kennedy and Stephen McPhail, Mark Hudson and Joe Ledley.
Cardiff manager Dave Jones: "Roy is a doing a good job and will turn Ipswich around just as he did at Sunderland.
"Ipswich are good enough to stay up. They are a fantastic football club with a good manager. They have some good players. Sometimes you go through a season where you think everything is in place and all of a sudden it doesn't work out as you'd like. That happens in every division.
"Ipswich aren't doing as well as they expected, but in their case they brought in a new manager, new players came in and had to bed in. There were high expectation levels, but things don't happen overnight. When Roy went in, everybody assumed that was it, crash bang wallop, here we go, we're going to be fantastic.
"You've still got to earn the right, and get the right players, and that takes time. He's basically on the first rung of that ladder.
"His playing career has nothing to do with his managerial career. His playing career stands him in good stead because of what he's done, and the dressing rooms he's been involved with. But it doesn't mean that because you've been a fantastic player that it's all going to fall right. You've still got to earn it and Roy certainly did that at Sunderland. He earned the right as a manager. His team didn't do well at Sunderland because he was a good player, it was because he was a good manager. And that's what he will do at Ipswich - he will prove he's a good manager."
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