Miller Time?

Dropped points at home and a failure to score. With goals generally seeming harder to come by, despite the chances created, Darren feels that part of the problem might lie in the current central midfield partnership.

A critical weekend, but Ipswich drop points.

Its hard to blame the players too much, or the performance, since everything in the 0-0 draw with QPR was right except for that final vital ingredient. The goals to win the game.

With our two top scorers absent, plus the forward brought in as cover finding himself on the treatment table aswell, the failure to put the ball in the net is perhaps not all that surprising.

But, particularly taking the above into account, perhaps Magilton isnt helping things with his choice of central midfielders. Whilst he has seemed consistent in his strategy throughout the season, with one in a holding position and one pushing forward, his choice of players seems to be anything but.

For most of the first half of the season, Tommy Miller has been forced to play a holding midfield role in which he has not appeared altogether comfortable. With the signing of Velice Sumulikoski, the Macedonian took up this holding role, which finally freed Miller to the position that he has performed so well in the past for Ipswich. For much of February, the two players appeared to compliment each other, with Miller producing his best performances since returning to Ipswich.

However, the conundrum was, and is, Owen Garvan. An extremely talented player, capable of unlocking the best of defences, the current jewel in the crown of the academy (until he is inevitably sold), but out of the first team. So, where does he fit?

Clearly, the team selections this season demonstrate that the management do not think he is suitable for the holding role, something most fans would probably agree with. But, when given the emphasis to push forward, he is not instinctively a goal scorer, or even a goal threat. Two league goals from a largely attacking position (one of which being the arguable "fluke" against Charlton), is testament to this.

Maybe it could be argued that, with a full compliment of our varying attacking threats fit and available, his goal threat is not really so important when he can be such a creative threat instead. However, the team is currently shorn of its leading goalscorers and so the reliance on goals from elsewhere, notably its midfield, seems quite critical.

It seems that, wonderful player that he is, Garvan is not really the player best suited to either midfield role at this moment in time. With Sumulikoski seeming destined to make the defensive role his own, the time is right for Tommy Miller to return to the side and remind us of that goalscoring instinct which we need, and which we know he is truly capable of.