Ipswich Thrash Conventry

Pablo Counago hit a brace in what turned out to be a fairly one-sided encounter in front of the Sky cameras at Portman Road. Skipper Jason de Vos and man of the match Jon Walters scored the others, with the goal of the game coming from Stephen Hughes with a thumping free-kick.

Gary Roberts returned to the Ipswich side in place of Sylvain Legwinski after last week's disappointing 4-0 defeat at West Brom. The game started off fairly even - both sides creating openings, but not too many serious chances. However, in the ninth minute, captain Jason de Vos nodded home an inch-perfect free-kick from four yards.

The home side by now were looking more settled and played some very fluent football and they soon deservedly doubled their lead. Dan Harding sent in a wonderful diagonal ball into the box from the left, with Jon Walters doing exceptionally well to nod it down and feed it to Spaniard Pablo Counago, turned both his men and poked home from inside the six-yard box.

Ipswich pressured and a wonderful Dan Harding strike was blocked on the line by a Coventry defender. From the resultant corner, the ball was cleared only as far as Gary Roberts. The left-winger sent in a teasing ball and Jon Walters was there to head home and make the game seemingly over at half-time with the score being 3-0.

Coventry came out fighting in the second half and they could have had a man advantage - the otherwise outstanding Alex Bruce lucky not to be penalised for hauling down Adebola inside the box when he was the last man.

Another Owen Garvan corner was cleared by Coventry but only to David Wright in the middle of the park who played a neat ball back to Garvan. He crossed, which Walters flicked onto Lee, who forced a save out of Konstantopoulos but the ball landed only as far as Pablo Counago who nodded the ball in the net from close-range.

Coventry got a contender for goal of the month through Stephen Hughes, after the ball was laid off to him from a free-kick and he lashed home an unstoppable effort into the top left-hand corner of the goal. Town sat back and in the end were well worthy of their win against a poor Coventry side.