Burgess: Nothing is Defined This Time of Year – Ipswich Town News
Burgess: Nothing is set at this time of year
Sunday, January 15, 2023 9:33 AM by Blair Ferguson
Town fans left Portman Road disappointed after Plymouth struck a late equalizer to earn a 1-1 draw from yesterday’s top-flight game at Portman Road, but centre-back Cameron Burgess says nothing in the race for promotion will be defined by that Result.
Wes Burns put Ipswich ahead in the 62nd minute with a thunderclap but Town could not match the win as loaned Norwich full-back Bali Mumba struck a deflected equalizer in the 93rd minute.
The result leaves Ipswich in third place, seven points adrift of first-placed Pilgrims with a game in hand, while a 1-0 win for Sheffield Wednesday away at Wycombe means the gap to second place has grown to four points . However, Burgess is determined that Ipswich is still good at fighting.
Despite disappointment with the result and the fact that the Blues were unable to gain ground on the Pilgrims, Burgess says the outcome of the promotion race will not have been determined by yesterday’s game.
“One hundred percent,” he insisted. “It’s never the case this time of year. I think it’s about putting yourself in a position in the final months of the season and that’s our goal and we’re doing that game by game, the old cliché.
“A good week of training next week and then again. I’m sure if we keep going like this and do the right things, we’ll be there either way.
“Mountains and valleys and swings and roundabouts and all the old sayings. It’s really going to boil down to just banging, playing one game at a time, getting the right feats, and at the end of the day, they give you the points.
“That’s what all the teams at the top have done so far and it’s just a matter of continuing to do what we’re doing well and we’ll see where we are at the end of the season.”
Burgess was particularly frustrated that Mumba’s late equalizer had been deflected off him en route to the top corner.
“Those are two that have now come off me and gone into the top corner,” he recalled ruefully, as Fleetwood’s similar last equalizer had also caught him on his way through.
“But that’s football. Sometimes it goes over the stands and sometimes it goes in the top corner and you just have to take it by the chin I suppose. It’s just hard to take when it’s in the odd 90 minutes. That’s the hard part.
“You try to do the right thing and sometimes it comes back to bite you a little bit and a little bit bad luck and it goes into the top corner.
“It’s very frustrating when you’re the leading team and then you concede a late goal and that’s happened to us a couple of times this season.
“Another deflected shot that goes into the top corner. Frustrated overall but we know it was a tough game overall and a bitter pill to swallow but there are many positives to playing against such a top team.
“It was great promotion for the league, to be honest. Two top teams went head to head and it was a great game to be a part of. Two teams really went for each other and didn’t hold anything back and I think that stalled the whole game.”
Unusually at Portman Road this season, Town faced a team that wanted to bring the game to them.
“Something a little bit different than what’s happened over the last few weeks, but nothing we weren’t prepared for,” he added.
“We saw that with them in the first game and we knew what they were going to bring. So it was something we were definitely prepared for. But it was nice to be a part of it.”
Regarding the conditions with very heavy rain from the end of the first half to the second, he said: “It’s the same for both teams. To be honest, the wind rather than the rain, a swirling wind and trying to defend some of the balls in the air was hard to read at times.
“Often when the pitch is wet the ball moves a lot quicker which suits us too and I suppose a side like Plymouth who also love to play football. Here, too, the conditions are the same for both teams.”
Burgess paid tribute to the atmosphere at Portman Road with a sell-out crowd of 29,069, the highest since May 2015 and the club’s highest attendance in the third division.
“In that game, a lot of things were blurry with the atmosphere and the occasion and things like that. It just flew by, to be honest,” the 27-year-old admitted.
“It was awesome to get out of the tunnel. It was a special opportunity to get out and see all the numbers and there was no space everywhere you looked. A great game to be a part of and proud to be a part of.”
The noise peaked when Burns hit out, “Some Strike, huh? He can certainly kick a ball hard, that’s for sure. I don’t think there is anyone stopping this. But a great finish and a great goal.
“Honestly, you couldn’t hear much. Even when you were talking to your teammate next to you, you had to yell really loud to deliver messages. But that’s what we’re all here for and that’s what we want to be a part of, and it was great to play before that.
“Everyone came to this club to enjoy this atmosphere. It’s great to play in front of him and I know the fans know that and they definitely made themselves heard today.”
Photo: TWTD
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| Saxony blue74 added 09:59 – 15 January Can’t agree more. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly some lose perspective. |  |
| Suffolk boy added 10:05 – January 15 Of course he has a point or two; BUT the way forward might be clearer if we could learn to add defensive security to our games. | |
| Nomore4 added 10:27 – January 15 Infallibly we hear that every year…every year we fail. | |
| KMcBlue added 10:48 – January 15 Keep saying that until we don’t get promoted in May… | |
| Bazza8564 added 11:00 – 15 January One-goal leads will always leave us on a razor’s edge and while I agree with people who spoke last night about Whittaker coming on FB and saying ‘we don’t need forwards, we need defenders’, I can’t help but agree , feeling like we’re not capable of killing some games from this season is going to haunt us. | |
| HopefulBlue69 added 11:06 – January 15 You forget Charlton Bazza… The team needs to have the mental toughness to believe we deserve the win and not cross our fingers and pray to the football gods that we keep them out in the final minutes… | |
| ArnieM added 11:23 – January 15 No, very true, nothing is defined at this time of year. But what is obvious to most by now is our inability to defend a 1-0 lead (or higher!). We can’t defend balls into our penalty area. FACT! |  |
| TimmyH added 11:38 – January 15 Right, nothing is defined but the trend of the current games is for us to be overtaken on Wednesday and slowly being caught up by the likes of Derby and Bolton… lots of water flowing under the bridge and going through history over the past decade or so Ipswich is largely worse in the 2nd half of the season. |  |
| Ipswichbusiness added 11:54 – January 15 He’s right that a game doesn’t make a season and that nothing is won in January. However, the league can be lost months before May and we seem to be making life very difficult for ourselves. By the way, what happened to George Edmundson? At the beginning of the season he was a regular player, now he doesn’t even make the squad anymore. | |
| to added 13:16 – 15 January A slice of reality for those feeling down after yesterday’s draw. City still clear 2nd favorite for league 1 with bookmakers. 11-8 Shef Wed, 7-4 Ipswich & 9-2 Plymouth. Bet many wouldn’t believe that. | |
| TimmyH added 13:29 – 15 January Ipswichbusiness – agree! Same here when I think of Edmundson yesterday, he hasn’t started in ages and has certainly played second fiddle to Burgess. He started the season slowly and made some mistakes and got dropped but then came back and played a lot better and hasn’t played much since! strange. | |
| linkboy13 added 13:31 – 15 January If we don’t get promoted, do people here think McKenna has accomplished too little considering the financial resources at his disposal? I like Mark Ashdon but some people think he’s god, his signings have been fine but not all have been successful. Whichever way you look at it the team is lacking in some departments Ipswich teams generally seem to lack the backbone or ability to carve out a result. If we continue to tie too many games, we might struggle to hold onto a playoff spot. | |
| ArnieM added 13:36 – 15 January Not at all. I think we’re very much work in progress under KMc… it’s only been a year. We have to be realistic. In my opinion, the squad is not complete. | |
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