Town boss Paul Jewell has praised supporters for the way they got behind the Blues during the 5-2 defeat to Southampton, despite his side being 3-0 down at half-time. Jewell says Town need to put their Portman Road phobia behind them sooner rather than later.

The Liverpudlian said: “At 3-0 down at home at half-time some places you probably wouldn’t get to the tunnel alive. But the supporters were terrific.

“I said to the players, ‘you see the response when we’re up and at them on the front foot?’. But we we’re always on the back foot, we take a backwards step.

“Why that is, I’m at a loss. It’s been happening here for quite a while. I thought we were making progress. I knew we were nowhere near where we want to be, but we take one step forward and we take three or four back.”

Jewell says this goes back long beyond his time with Town with the Blues having recorded only 32 home wins in 78 matches in all competitions since the start of the 2008/09 campaign: “I think there was one season [2007/08] when Ipswich couldn’t lose at home and couldn’t win away when Jim was here.

“We lost 10 games at home last year, we let in five goals against Norwich, we lose by five [to Southampton]. It really hurts me. I'm not sure it hurts some of the players enough."

He feels some of his squad aren’t doing themselves justice: “They’re letting themselves down, that’s the biggest thing, and they’re letting the supporters down.

“We’ve played three games, we won at Bristol City, but if you look back at what I said after the Bristol City game, I said we’re still a million miles away from being a team that’s going to be strong enough to compete. However, I feel that over time we’ll get there, that’s for sure.”

The Blues boss felt that defensively his team made life easy for Southampton: “It’s difficult to track people from midfield when the centre forward’s getting hold of it and is playing little balls around the corner under no pressure. That’s almost impossible to stop.

“We make so many wrong decisions. When there’s no pressure, all of a sudden we’ll give the ball away from a throw-in, they’ll get the ball back and they have space to play in."

Jewell says the home fragility desperately needs to be conquered: “We’re a team which is lacking in confidence playing at home and we’ve got to get over that as quickly as possible.

“Mentally, we can’t get over the fear of playing here. We’ve got to do it because this is the best place to play, this is our home ground in front of our supporters.

“At the minute we’ve got too many people running across the white line completely lacking confidence.”

Meanwhile, Southampton's performance against the Blues has won them the League Managers Association Performance of the Week award. Former Town boss Joe Royle is amongst those who sit on the voting panel.

Story syndicated from TWTD.co.uk

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