I used to edit a magazine for a charity that helped older people. One of our few regular contributors used to send in a column of happy reminiscences about the days of her childhood. They were just lists really: the old "flea pit" cinema, sweets in big jars, corner shops, home-made jam, ration coupons, trams, and so on. Occasionally I couldn't resist the temptation to drop something a bit more realistic in, like diptheria, rickets or corporal punishment for infants.

It might surprise people but, as someone who spends much of her life writing about history and who has published a whole book about the history of Ipswich Town, I hate nostalgia. I don't know if it's a British problem, but nothing turns me off more than all those films starring Maggie Smith and Hugh Grant set in a soft focus, sunlit Edwardian world of country houses, where endless supplies of drinks are provided by endless supplies of endlessly cheerful, cheeky Cockney servants. Likewise the horrendous idea of people actually dressing up to pretend to recreate Civil War battles appals me, as do the numerous repeats of episodes of Top of the Pops from the 1980s. That was my era, so I can assure you that most TOTP programmes were rubbish in which mostly duff pickup bands made up of session musicians were introduced to badly-dressed teenagers by pervy-looking middle-aged disc jockeys. There's an enormous difference between looking at the past in order to learn something and wallowing in a sanitised version of it. In fact, I've just discovered that there is actually such a thing as Living in the Past Disorder, a borderline personality disorder where people avoid facing up to their present lives by dwelling in a world of more pleasant memories. And listening to prog rock albums.

I sometimes wonder if Town fans occasionally suffer from a football version of Living in the Past Disorder and I'm not the only one judging by some of the things supporters of rival clubs say. A few years ago, I was asked by a friend to help him write a short guide to Ipswich for visiting Hull City fans. When I saw a copy of the leaflet, the only comment in it about Town fans was that we were all "obsessed with past glories from thirty years ago." It's quite painful to think that's the only thing anyone has to say about us.

I've always tried to defend this by saying that at least we have a history interesting enough to dwell in. Unlike certain other East Anglian clubs who issued a special shirt celebrating the 50th anniversary of losing an FA Cup semi-final, we have actually won some serious silverware, had the two greatest English managers of all time, and number a good many great players in our ranks, from Ray Crawford to Marcus Stewart. And that's not even to mention Escape To Victory.

But, of course, I don't have to tell you this. You know it by heart.

History is nothing if we don't learn from it and this is what concerns me. There's nothing wrong with remembering Sir Alf and Sir Bobby, or indeed of thinking about those wonderful players from the past, but there's a difference between enjoying the past and being trapped in it, especially when the majority of Town supporters will probably not have seen those great footballers play. There's a real danger that we will end up suffering from two other made-up conditions: the He's Not John Wark Syndrome and Ipswich Way Disease.

The first of these - the idea that every player has to live up to the standards set by their predecessors - is unfortunately quite pernicious. Even young players straight out of the academy are scrutinised by some fans who dismiss them because they don't live up to the standard set by a top international player of the 1980s, despite the fact that football has changed completely and the media has forgotten it even existed before 1992. This usually manifests itself in booing the not-good-enough player, thus completely demoralising him. Players from James Scowcroft and Jermaine Wright to young, inexperienced youth team kids have been booed and abused in relatively recent years, even at times when the club has been in contention for promotion. Both Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy have spoken to the press about it. Keane complained that "We’re two points off the play-offs and players who are 18 or 19 years of age are getting jeered and booed," and McCarthy has pointed out, increasingly angrily, that it's counter-productive to undermine your own team. The argument is that everyone pays their entrance fee and so can boo and criticise as much as they wish and it would be horrible if we were all happy-clappy supporters who bought all the merchandise and lapped up everything unquestioningly, but is the reason behind this that we can't accept that our managers are not Robson and our players are not as good as Paul Mariner? I have news for you. We'll never have a manager like Bobby Robson again - and unfortunately because of the way that football is structured and financed, it's highly unlikely we'll ever see a Mariner or a Muhren in the blue and white again either. 

Of course, the hostility tends to evaporate once a player has moved on and he enters that warm, fuzzy Ipswich Valhalla and becomes a Former Player. Despite the fact that neither Jordan Rhodes nor Connor Wickham appear to have become the stellar players they promised to be - notwithstanding that they've had perfectly decent careers - does not prevent them being regarded by many Town fans with misty-eyed nostalgia.

The second problem we have is The Ipswich Way. This slightly mythical concept is about how we should be playing beautiful Barcelona-style passing football, while winning matches in the Championship against defences made up entirely of seven feet tall brick outhouses. Any direct ball is greeted, by some fans at least, as a disgusting "hoof." Yet reading about our past players, I suspect that the likes of Ray Crawford and Ted Phillips, who still holds the club goalscoring record with 46 in one season ("I knocked three goalkeepers out and broke another one’s wrist with the ball. A trialist the club had left on a stretcher."), could occasionally tear themselves away from their pioneering version of tiki taka and blast the ball up the pitch. There's a lack of appreciation of what some of our players contribute off the ball too, recently-departed Daryl Murphy being one of the players to be accused of hoofing the ball by some supporters. A post on the TWTD forum lamenting his leaving in quite muted terms was derided. The Murph-fan who posted it was told in no uncertain terms that he was too young to know about stuff. Mariner and Taricco were brought in to back up the point that no one will ever be as good, not even if they score 27 goals in a season. Those Were The Days certainly gets the prize for the most appropriate football fanzine name of all time, however ironic.

What I am trying to say is that there's nothing wrong with wanting to know about your club's history. On the contrary. But we should understand it and learn from it - and ask questions. Has the club's decline been because of the way that league football has changed? Is there a difference in the way the club has been run since 2007? Have we become a "selling club?" Why have we had so many managers in recent years when we were a byword for stability? What are the reasons why it is virtually impossible that we'll reach the dizzy heights of the Ramsey or Robson years again? At least that would be constructive. We've always had moaners at Ipswich, but at the moment we're in danger that the stands at Portman Road are going to be populated by lots of Statlers and Waldorfs, jeering and catcalling at our current team while our past glories recede further and further into the shadows of the past.