By Aston
August 21 2004

Ipswich Town will set out to return to winning ways against Cardiff City tomorrow, if all goes well it will be Town’s 700th home league win.

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Ipswich Town will set out to return to winning ways against Cardiff City tomorrow, if all goes well it will be Town’s 700th home league win.

Joe Royle will have a near fully fit squad for tomorrow with only no players totally ruled out although Matt Richards is nursing a gashed foot, Jim Magilton has recovered from a thigh tear but may not play and Jason De Vos has no fracture in his leg and should continue in the middle of defence. Should Richards fail to pass fit either Fabian Wilnis will play as a make shift left or youngster Scott Baron could make his debut.

Joe is determined to put the game and performance against Derby last week behind him and get back to winning ways, but he is not assuming that Cardiff will be a walk in the park, with or with out Robert Earnshaw, Joe has said that: “Our last two performances have been poor but there is no reason to panic, we are still only three points off the top and a win on Saturday will put us in the top reaches of the division.

“Cardiff enjoyed an excellent season in the First Division last year after winning promotion.

“They have some very talented players and gave us more than a few anxious moments when they came to Portman Road at the back end of last season.

“Robert Earnshaw has grabbed most of the headlines for them and you can understand why given the amount of goals he has scored but I also have a lot of respect for Alan Lee.

“He was at Aston Villa as a youngster and has perhaps taken time to grow into the player he is now but he certainly has some talent and I see Cardiff as one of the dozen or so clubs that can go up from this division.

“As I have said many times before though, I prefer to concentrate on us rather than the opposition and if we are on our game, we are capable of beating anyone in this league.”.

Cardiff manager Lennie Lawrence could be with out up to five first team players tomorrow as Robert Earnshaw, Paul Parry and Danny Gabbidon are carrying knocks but should be fit. While Willie Boland and Peter Thorne are both lacking match fitness and may miss out.

Although Lennie Lawrence didn’t rule any of his players that had been away with their nation out of tomorrows game, saying that: “I can't finalise that until I know where we are with those coming back from International duty. As you know Earnie (Earnshaw), Gabbs (Gabbidon) and Paul Parry didn't go, but they've trained today so that's encouraging. Alan Lee ricked his neck in training with Ireland and he came back yesterday before the game at our insistence. Hopefully he will be alright but we don't know. Kav (Graham Kavanagh) played half an hour which you saw so I'm not anticipating any problems there. Ginge (James Collins) played most of the game against Latvia and Pagey (Robert Page) played all of it. There's a recovery session for all of those players this afternoon.

“Richard Langley went all the way to Jamaica to play against the USA so that would be the biggest concern of all. He won't be back in time for the recovery session at 3 or 4 'o clock I don't think but he's trying. I can't finalise it until I know how they all are physically and mentally. Then I have to decide about several things, obviously Jobi being one of them. Is he a sub or will he start? You'll have to wait and see.”.

Ipswich Town squad: Scott Barron, Darren Bent, Dean Bowditch, Pablo Couñago, Kelvin Davis, Jason De Vos, Drissa Diallo, Tony Dinning, Shefki Kuqi, Kevin Horlock, Jim Magilton, Tommy Miller, Richard Naylor, Lewis Price, Matt Richards, Ian Westlake, Fabian Wilnis.

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