If you’d like to get ahead of things and put your email in over there to make sure, feel free. I have also written a new blog (on Southampton) if you’d like to read some maudlin reflections on last Saturday’s events.

This blog will eventually get scrubbed but all the archived posts are already available for free over at the new place, including Shaun Calvert’s patterns of play stuff. Hopefully see you all over there.

Jack

These games feel to me something like an international break crossed with a particularly humiliating raffle. The former because I find myself just counting days until I can watch a "real football match" again. The latter because beating one of these teams is an incredible feeling but the price paid for those rare moments is going to twenty other games that are frankly degrading.

I can’t even really enjoy watching the special players the opposition bring because I’m so busy hoping they play terribly. You’re there hoping Kevin De Bruyne over-cooks a pass or Mo Salah bunts his shot over the bar, like going to the Opera and hoping Pavarotti has a sore throat.

Our performance on Saturday was largely fine, but the game was over ten minutes before half time. Are you allowed to say it's fine to be 3-0 down before half time for the second game in a row? I suppose in my mind I have a (rational) check list for what gives you a chance of something in these games and feel like we hit the mark with some of them.

Some of them are things you can sort of control by being disciplined and organised:

You need to keep the opposition to a reasonable number of shots, fewer than maybe 15 or so (It was 16 in the end, so tick-ish. Chelsea had 20 digs at goal at Portman Road).

Of these the clear, big chances, should obviously be kept down to a minimum, 4 or less. (It was only 3, so tick that off, Chelsea had 4).

You will need to block a lot of these shots, so your keeper doesn’t have to deal with them, maybe 5 or so. I do sometimes wonder if “shot count” would be a more accurate statistic if you just omitted blocked shots, where the opposition haven’t actually made the space to have an effort at goal. We managed 3 blocks against Liverpool, so not quite enough. It was 8 against Chelsea, which probably explains why their attacking performance felt less threatening, goals aside.

We weren't perfect, but in the round, the defensive performance was within acceptable bounds. The kind that maybe gets you something if your keeper has a 9 out of 10 day, or their forwards need 37 shots at goal to score.

Then there’s a few less controllable things.

Your keeper probably needs to make at least 6 or so saves, a couple of them will need to be very good ones (Walton made 2 stops from 6 shots faced, very much not a tick).

You'll need the opposition to miss at least 1, probably 2 absolute sitters (we somehow contrived to miss one more big chance than Liverpool did, no ticks there).

You need to score first and that probably means taking more or less the first opportunity you get (well, we scored from our 3rd shot, which is a tick I reckon or would have been if that shot hadn’t come in the 90^th minute).

You need a referee who lets you play the game you need to play - either by letting you rough the opposition up a bit or by giving you your share of cheap fouls (Michael Salisbury obliged us in neither respect, quite the opposite).

When you don't tick most of those boxes you inevitably lose, no matter whether collectively or individually your team had a good or bad day. Frankly, if you'd told me beforehand that Christian Walton would complete only one full save all game, I'd have assumed far worse than 4-1 would be incoming, though I’m sure being 3-0 up from 8 shots probably reduced Liverpool’s urgency in peppering our goal much more.

Such a long shot are we in these fixtures, you sometimes come to talk of them being "almost a free hit" (although never without the always). You prepare yourself mentally to lose the game and probably lose it badly. Although there's always a nagging voice saying "but, maybe...".

Still, when the game actually unfolds in front of you, you rather unfairly turn back into a stern critic. Gone is the pre-game sympathy with the task confronting the players. I'd have been pleasantly surprised at kick off to learn we were only going to face 16 shots at goal and just 6 on target. I would have thought it unfortunate to concede to the opposition’s 1^st shot on target, then again to their 2nd. But each and every goal, I bristled at one or other of our players losing his man, failing to cut a passing lane, getting beat on the dribble or such like.

Where was this free hit I was going to give the players when Szoboszlai ran off Kalvin Phillips, sent Dara O'Shea for a bag of chips, then beat Christian Walton with a low drive with his weaker foot from 20 yards, that wasn't even properly in the corner? Where was it when no-one stopped Gakpo’s cross, Leif Davis got caught under the ball and Walton got beat from a narrow angle? Nowhere. Useless bastards, all of them! No wonder we're doomed!

I suppose it is impossible to switch off. Getting irritated at what unfolds is almost less internally damaging than a kind of passive acceptance. In the end, though I know it to be irrational, the funk I feel after Liverpool and Manchester City cuts no less deep than after losing to Cardiff or Lincoln. Probably worse even because our last little nugget of joy was less recent. Still, part of me knows that whatever the players did or didn’t do on Saturday was more or less irrelevant to what comes next. The skill and mindset required to give yourself a shot at points in these fixtures is just so wildly different to what you need in most fixtures.

Still, it’s over now. At least next week I can get back to my more quotidian crippling anxiety in a game we can actually compete in.

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This season we have had two multi-game weeks, both following a promising sequence of results and performances. The first came after a win against Tottenham and a draw with Man U: Saturday, 1-0 loss at Forest, Tuesday 1-0 loss, Palace at home, Sunday, 2-1 loss, Bournemouth at home. The second came after a win against Chelsea and a draw away at Fulham. Thursday, 2-0 loss, Brighton at home, Sunday, 6-0 loss, City at home.

4 home games, 1 away game. 1 goal for, 12 against. Extent of collective belief torched, hard to estimate.

Brighton was tough to take after seeming to find a good formula to compete, even in ostensibly harder fixtures. Though in a way it wasn’t a terribly surprising result, given Brighton are a top half side and had key players returning from injury. We were marginally on top until we conceded, were a touch unfortunate to go behind, but have rarely looked like we have good solutions when we’re losing games this season. That is probably the limit to what our “good formula to compete” currently looks like.

Manchester City was the fourth time we’ve taken a proper beating this season and certainly the worst of the four. An afternoon where we chucked in a performance that any of the other 19 teams in the league would probably have had enough to beat, against one of the half dozen teams who could slap us even at full power.

What to do with these demoralising weeks? Diminish them? A 0-8 aggregate scoreline across two home games feels disastrous but in practice there’s no additional punishment for being rubbish, just the same zero points out of six we got from respectable away performances at Arsenal and Forest. It is a cliché, but these aren’t the games that define your season. Though we will almost certainly have to beat at least a couple of near-Brighton-level opponents to stay up.

Laugh it off? The best thing I could say after the City game was at least it was over now and either we’d avoid relegation anyway and it wouldn’t matter or we’d go down and at least we wouldn’t have to repeat the experience next season. At 6-0 down gallows humour is always tempting, though the sarcastic round of “we’re going to score in a minute” during a rare moment of second half pressure felt rather too much like mocking our own players for my taste.

Learn from it? We might be beyond that now. At nearly 60 per cent of the way through the season, I fear that we have absorbed almost all the lessons we can at this point. If we are to up our points return in our final 16 games it’s probably more a case of game-specific tweaks, just damn well winning a few more margins or new personnel rather than something suddenly clicking.

We’ve found ways to improve certain things over the season (defending our box, staying in games) but some issues seem totally intractable – we don’t score enough goals, especially at home (only 8 in 12 games), especially when losing (only 5 across 15 games we’ve trailed in). The more the onus is on us to attack, the less threatening we become. We are yet to find a way to consistently make clear chances against set defences, though we can sometimes be clinical in transition, hence our superior goalscoring record on the road and when the opposition need to chase the game. Addressing this presumably explains the recruitment of Jaden Philogene and (the seemingly imminent) Julio Enciso, despite both ostensibly occupying roles we’re already overstocked in.

Put it in context? There is of course the underlying situation – the double promotion, a squad half recruited too long ago, half recruited too recently – but continually pointing that out feels defeatist. The immediate context though... the thing about being the small fry in this league is that every time you’re feeling good and throwing punches the fixture list is sneaking up behind you, ready to smash you back down to the ground.

Look at Wolves, three good results against Leicester, Manchester United and Tottenham, then there’s Nottingham Forest, Newcastle and Chelsea ready to put them summarily back in their box (aggregate 9-1 defeat). Similarly, after 4 points from Chelsea and Fulham all felt pretty groovy at Portman Road, then Brighton, Manchester City and Liverpool appear menacingly round the corner. Brighton may not be like the other two but the thing with those other borderline unwinnable fixtures is you’re left with such a narrow path to any points in that block. You get one (incredibly tough) “winnable game” to accumulate anything and it only takes half an hour of bad football to make 0 from 9 almost a certainty.

Perhaps the only thing to do is put these little runs out of our mind? We’ve taken our licks but are a long way from dead. We’re still in the fight and there’s still a route through this. The likeliest outcome is that whilst we’re busy losing to Liverpool, Wolves will be getting similar treatment from Arsenal. The battle will still be on when we have both taken our punishment. Unlike the two teams below us we aren’t despairing and furious, fighting ourselves as much as the opposition.

It is important to keep it that way. Southampton after that. Arriving with little but pride to play for, not good enough for this league but certainly good enough to beat us on their day, their visit becomes must win. No off day, no fine margins, no spawny deflections, no opposition worldies, no refereeing blunders, none of the usual stuff that peppers a football match, permitted.

Too often the default in that sort of scenario at Portman Road is unhelpful. Like most stadiums, the stands always rock against elite opponents, if only out of sympathy for the task confronting the players. The heartening reception at full-time against City was stronger than I expected but not surprising.

Yet when the visitors are someone we imagine we should be beating, too often the atmosphere is nervous, then silent, then tetchy. When the Saints come around it has to be different. No weight of expectation, no fussing if it doesn’t go exactly to plan, just thousands trying to put the same energy into the players that we tried to give them last Sunday. In the unequal fight to stay in the league there aren’t many things we have that other teams don’t, sticking together might be all we have.

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So instead let’s talk about the squad and the window. Popular wisdom has January as “a bad time to do business”. Way back in the parallel universe that was 2021, it was even Ipswich CEO Mark Ashton’s view: “January’s always a really difficult window, I’ve got to be honest with you. I said in the summer that I prefer to do most of our business in the summer transfer window.”

The basis of this view is plausible enough. Mid-season the buying club is often desperate to solve some imminent crisis and the selling club has usually done all its squad/ budget planning for the season and doesn’t need or want to sell anyone good.

As it turns out though the winter window can also be a moment for tinkering. Summer squad builds can be a bit abstract. You don’t quite know what you’ve got without seeing them regularly in competitive action. In January you’ve had a few months to directly observe that you might need more thrust at right back, a little more pizazz off the bench or a lot more presence up front. Summer, you are designing the car, it’s concept and blueprint, winter is topping up the oil, tinkering with the transmission.

I suspect Ashton’s position has changed since then. 2023 and 2024 were transformative winters for Ipswich, on each occasion supercharging promotion campaigns. He and McKenna have been excellent at (relatively economical) diagnosis and repair for two seasons straight. So what needs fixing now?

Defence

When you’ve shipped four goals in 20 per cent of your games, it’s probably natural to think your defence needs work. Counter-intuitively though, I think defensively the first half of the season went almost as well as we could have expected. The other 16 games we played saw just 19 conceded, which is eminently manageable. Keeping the opposition to binary (0 or 1) most weeks is almost the best thing you can do for your relegation fight and Ipswich have achieved that a respectable 11 times.

Most of those four-goal days had the same thing in common, we selected an orthodox right back at right back (Harry Clarke or Ben Johnson) rather than a centre half with right back tendencies (Axel Tuanzebe or Dara O’Shea). With Axel’s injury troubles and Dara needing to be available for centre back duty, acquiring another right-back-ish centre back was the obvious necessary fix and very re-assuringly we went and did it in the first week of January. Ben Godfrey looks ideal for the purpose – tall, fast, athletic, tidy in possession, everything we need there. Bonus points for Premier League experience and not taking up one of two domestic loan spots.

The rest of it is surely as you were. We are not yet done with Aro Muric, who we will still hope can fixed with a bit of work on stilling his mind at key moments. Perhaps a meditation regime would do the trick. In the meantime Christian Walton is doing a fine job anyway.

Elsewhere there’s been some speculation about selling and replacing Luke Woolfenden and Cameron Burgess. Obviously, either exit would break my heart, but even putting that aside I still can’t see the case for it. Woolfenden and Burgess have impressed when picked and look in no way substandard for the level. Improving on either as individuals would incur considerable effort and expense for very marginal reward (as no incomer is likely to start ahead of O’Shea and Greaves). Any gain would come at the cost of further unmooring the squad from any connection to the promotion journey and that is surely “institutional memory” we should look to preserve as long as possible.

It is worth noting that the clubs we are looking to catch up to – Brighton, Brentford, Fulham, Bournemouth – all maintained a grounding in personnel connected to their rise for several seasons post-promotion: Lewis Dunk, Shane Duffy, Ethan Pinnock, Tom Cairney, Lewis Cook to name a few.

Verdict: Ben Godfrey is plenty, no more business necessary. Hopefully a good loan to help Harry Clarke kick on.

Midfield

If you asked me a few weeks ago about our midfield, I might have had something more interesting than “as you were” to say about it. Kalvin Phillips kept mysteriously appearing on the bench and never making it on the pitch, no matter the circumstances. 1-0 down? Better get Jack Taylor on for Jens Cajuste. 1-0 up? Hmm, think this calls for Jack Taylor on for Jens Cajuste.

What mysterious scenario, we wondered, was Kalv being held back for? As it turned out there wasn’t much mystery. Phillips was nursing an ankle injury and was now seen as cover for the deeper Morsy role, rather than the box-to-box Cajuste role. Simple as that.

When we brought him back in for Arsenal he looked rather good and grew into the second half. He then ran the show against Bristol Rovers, which I suppose you’d damn well hope he would given the opposition, but plenty of players in Phillips’ situation don’t take such opportunities. Simple.

Well, nothing simple about it really. We’ve found ourselves in a peculiar situation where our undroppable and almost unsubstitutable club captain sits in front of easily our most prestigious player. Not that prestige should get him in the team, but it isn’t an arrangement we likely envisaged when we took a punt on a former England international and hoped to resurrect his career. Would we drop Morsy – with everything that might mean for the wider cohesion of the group – for what is really just a hope that 2021 Kalvin Phillips is in there somewhere?

On the other side there’s no dislodging Cajuste who is everything we could have possibly hoped he would be. Dynamic, strong, technically assured, progressive on the ball and (mostly) diligent and determined in his defensive work. Jack Taylor has developed into an excellent understudy, offering enough physicality to be a good defensive sub and enough long passing and shooting ability to make him an attacking option too. No upgrade looks likely to me here.

So we rumble on with the sneaking suspicion that we do probably need something more in midfield but without any realistic way to do that. I’m sure we’d love a bit more actual control in the middle of the park, but a midfielder that would guarantee that control is probably well beyond our budget or already in the building if only we could unlock more of his underlying quality in more games. Thankfully, in Axel Tuanzebe last season there is at least some precedent for McKenna rehabilitating a player in that fashion, just in time for the run-in.

Verdict: Probably no-one and cross our fingers Phillips kicks on, because I suspect we wouldn’t otherwise sign anyone to displace Morsy or Cajuste.

Forwards

Refreshing the forward line does feel like the main priority. It’s not that our Summer squad-building went wrong exactly. Indeed, quite a lot of our forwards probably exceeded my pre-season expectations. Obviously Liam Delap has been a revelation, but Sam Szmodics, Conor Chaplin and Nathan Broadhead have also hit the optimistic end of expectations.

The trouble is it hasn’t quite been enough. As it stands we aren’t scoring enough goals. Just one a game isn’t enough to keep us up, even if we continue keeping half our opponents to that crucial 0 or 1 goal. On their way to 36 points Nottingham Forest’s defence last year was only roughly as good as ours is now but we’re scoring 18 per cent fewer goals.

It isn’t terribly surprising that this is where we need a boost. Finding forwards who hurt Premier League teams is one of the toughest parts of recruiting for a promoted team. We seem to have found two players that are a real individual threat at this level – Hutchinson and Delap – plus a clutch of other forwards who are contributing, but it feels to me like we need one more that is a real weapon one-on-one, just to take the option of double-marking Hutchinson off the table.

There have been signs in the last couple of games that Nathan Broadhead could be that player. In the squad of fast, strong athletes we have built Broadhead has a vision, a delicacy of touch and a degree of composure that is far from universal. It’s something different and certainly gave Chelsea and Fulham a lot of trouble. You can understand though why McKenna might prefer not to 100 per cent rely on that kind of impact on a regular basis. Even at lower levels, Broadhead had a tendency to drift out of games, particularly away from home and sometimes when targeted by a very physical defensive midfielder. Okay Yokuşlu gave him an especially hard time when we played West Brom last season, for instance. So I can see why another lightning dribbler – Jaden Philogene – seems to be an imminent arrival.

Philogene’s arrival won’t hurt numbers-wise either. Although with Jack Clarke, Sam Szmodics, Nathan Broadhead and now Jaden Philogene we look rather over-subscribed in the “inside left” position, we are short in terms of forwards in general. McKenna looks to use six players in the three non-striker roles in the majority of games. We currently have 8 including nominal right back Ben Johnson. So, a normal matchday squad is probably one injury away from all of them at least making the bench. Philogene coming in gives us options, wherever we play him (and we might try and play him in any or all of the three forward roles). Another right winger – Middlesbrough loanee Ben Doak or Wolfsburg’s Patrick Wimmer – might also be on the cards.

The other obvious one to get done is a striker. McKenna has been a lot kinder about Ali Al-Hamadi’s readiness for Premier League football than a lot of Ipswich fans have been. There’s been speculation that Al-Hamadi is struggling with an ongoing injury, but watching his inexplicably bad penalty against Bristol Rovers my diagnosis was “imposter syndrome”. Here’s a footballer who never made an EFL appearance until he was 20, was let go by Wycombe Wanderers just two years ago and was playing League Two football last season. He doesn’t feel like he deserves to be in the Premier League and it has messed with his head to the point where he’s struggling even in games against more limited opposition.

McKenna’s system requires two big strikers to share 90 or so minutes of frenetic pressing and channel running. One of our two big strikers (George Hirst) picks up more than his fair share of injuries, leaving the other one (Liam Delap) with a workload that potentially puts him in danger of getting an injury. So there needs to be a third and it can’t be poor Ali Al-Hamadi right now. So the question is what can you get as that third striker?

Ipswich have form for being ambitious to the point of delusion in sourcing strikers. In Summer 2022 we pursued George Hirst for too long and ended up short. In Summer 2023 we looked around for ages before getting the wholly inadequate Dane Scarlett late in August. In Summer 2024 we pursued Armando Broja for an age, despite his initial disinterest and later injury recurrence, switched too late to Emmanuel Latte Lath and ended up one short. Ambition is great but if we’d pragmatically gone out and got a journeyman Premier League striker (Odsonne Edouard and Steve Mounie were two that were mentioned), who could physically compete and hold their own at the level, I suspect we would have a few more points than we do.

Verdict: I suspect we’ll end getting Philogene and a striker. The striker will be someone experienced and slightly underwhelming, who nevertheless fits the system. The right wing back/winger may well have to wait for the Summer.

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Naïve is a pundit’s word, perhaps the definitive pundit word for describing struggling promoted teams like Ipswich. You can almost guarantee any team showing reckless ambition will have the men sat next to Gary Lineker shaking their head sadly. Naïve to get caught like that, naïve to try and play that way.

It always struck me as useless to describe what happens when a team fails to overcome superior opponents in a football match. I remember watching the 2006 world cup and noticing how it was the go-to description for unfamiliar foreign opposition at Summer tournaments. African teams in particular seemed to be thought “naive”, lending the word a sort of colonial air.

Bill Schwarz, historian of culture and the British Empire, argued that with de-colonisation such mindsets “came home” and started shaping domestic encounters.1 The Premier League with its hierarchies of esteem and status, its endless expansion and its funnelling of resources upwards resembles nothing so much as settler colonialism, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that it mimics the attitudes and language.

It always seemed obvious to me that anyone who succeeds in professional football must have ample exposure to how hard, cynical and merciless the game can be. That goes double for players forged in the EFL. If any experience in football teaches you every trick in the book, helps you learn that skill doesn’t always trump know-how, it’s bloody Accrington Stanley away.

I am obviously reluctant to have any sympathy for former Norwich full back Russell Martin, but after getting roundly pasted by pretty much everyone for Southampton’s possession-based style he must have taken some small satisfaction from watching his former team continue to get regularly destroyed despite playing in an ostensibly more attritional style. The truth is any team coming up starts the Summer with inferior players to all their rivals and no amount of pragmatism changes that. Neither Nottingham Forest nor Everton look to dominate possession or attack with reckless abandon, but the centre backs guarding their penalty area are better than yours and the forwards driving their counterattacks are faster and more skilful. If you do the same things as them, they will doubtless finish above you.

The trouble is, fundamentally none of the punditocracy are interested in us (or Southampton). We aren't the main character(s) and curiosity doesn't seem to be a very strong driver of football media. They might like one player (it’s Liam Delap, they like Liam Delap and the most important thing about him is where he’s going next), but everything else will be largely derivative. So, whilst you might presume something tactically interesting must have being going on for Ipswich to draw away at top half side Fulham last Sunday, you’ll not get much reflection on it beyond modest praise for the point and repetitive critique of what we got wrong.

They are going to play the hits and “too naïve to survive” has been number one for a couple of seasons now, so McKenna and his players have copped at least some "naivety" flak, if not quite as much as Martin and Southampton. Aro Muric leading the goalkeeping error statistics has been one regular prompt, with ball-playing goalkeepers a cardinal sin. Though in truth Muric's errors have generally been more in the "general brain fart" category rather than a product of excessive ambition. Leif Davis' aggressive attacking positioning has been highlighted at times too, against Newcastle from kick off and again for the late penalty concession last Sunday against Fulham. So generic is this commentary, with regard to the latter Shay Given on Match of the Day 2 and Micah Richards on The Rest of Football podcast managed to produce the exact same formulation, “I don’t want to say naïve…”

As unimaginative as this stuff is, after Newcastle even I felt maybe we'd been excessively “brave”. Less because of the much lamented third goal and more in concern at the high wing backs and man for man press. Perhaps a little more caution would have done us some good, though in truth I can see no set of tactical instructions that would have seen us compete with the Magpies in that mood and without our striker.

Still, after a couple of seasons of rock and roll attacking football, at Arsenal it felt dirty to be happy that we seemed to indulge in a bit of (Mick) McCarthyism, shuffling a big centre half out to right back, then sticking an additional full back in front of him. Realism? Cynicism? Pragmatism? Cowardice? Who cares. 10 in the box and no pasarán. Barely a touch of the football either, Arsenal must have set a record for Premier League possession in that first half hour. We repeated the dose against Chelsea and reaped handsome reward.

Now, it's one thing to set up that way when you're playing one of the acknowledged elite. Quite another against more everyday opposition. Before Fulham I did wonder if we'd revert to type, move to a more orthodox back four and get aggressive off the ball. In a way it was braver to treat Fulham a bit like Chelsea. We recognised early that their backline wouldn’t win many duels with Liam Delap, so there was little to be gained in playing through the thirds. We recognised Fulham wanted space, in behind for Antonee Robinson and Timothy Castagne to drive into, between the lines to sneak Alex Iwobi, Tom Cairney and Harry Wilson into pockets, and wisely decided we preferred to be compact and let them pass it in front of us.

It was a case of making Fulham do things they didn't want to. Put in percentage crosses, attempt ambitious through balls into a packed penalty area, take shots from distance, somehow threaten from a set piece. It wasn't necessarily comfortable but Fulham weren't really going anywhere. They passed and passed in a way that seemed likelier to get them into trouble than us. It was not dissimilar to the trick Mick McCarthy pulled on another Fulham team back in Summer 2015.

Yet it surely cannot be that simple? Back five, as many centre backs as you can muster, punt it long to the big man? If that was all there was to it, no promoted team would ever struggle. You know there's more. If all you try to be is tough to break down eventually you always succumb. There has to be a plan, a way to hurt the opposition going the other way.

Perhaps there is more than one way to be "naive". Pundit-land imagines a parallel universe where teams of limited means eschew all risk and always triumph in their caution. They knock it long and never give the ball away in dangerous areas. They keep players behind the ball just in case and stay compact at all times. In this world, there is no punishment for constantly ceding possession, no downside to refusing to commit players to attack when in the lead. This, of course, is not the real world. Good Premier League teams are well-used to breaking down a low block if that’s all you have to offer.

How Ipswich's setup has evolved this season defies the naive/pragmatic discussion. Throughout there have been attempts to pass through teams where possible but also a willingness to bypass midfield when necessary. There has been the shift to something that looks more like a back three in personnel but, as Shaun Calvert noted after the Arsenal game, we remain in roughly the same shape we have adopted for several seasons now. If the out-of-possession shape is more prominent this season, it is probably product of the reality that we can’t get hold of the ball more than one third of the time (28%, 24% and 35% in the last three games).

The change of personnel has not massively changed assigned roles. Dara O'Shea might be a specialist centre back but watch him harass João Felix against Chelsea or Alex Iwobi against Fulham. He's aggressively following them into areas high up the pitch and into midfield where necessary, just like Harry Clarke would have. Further forward Ben Johnson was still jumping on to the opposition full back Antonee Robinson, though Robinson was so high most of the time this often translated into defensive positioning.

In possession, our attacking shape still looks to pen the opposition in their half when the opportunity arises. The first goal against Fulham stemmed from not quite a spell of pressure and not quite a counter-attack. It started with Luke Woolfenden and Sam Morsy almost making a hash of passing out from the back, before Woolfenden hooks the ball clear. Delap made enough of a nuisance of himself to win a bit of space for Nathan Broadhead.

Broadhead if anything looks happier in the Premier League than he did in the Championship. He has vision and composure, he plays passes that many Ipswich players don’t currently seem to execute well at top flight game pace. He scampered away from Anderson, who desperately tried to foul him, then spun and picked out Davis to his left. Davis scuffed his cut back and that attack broke down.

But Fulham didn’t escape. By the time they come to play the ball forward the Ipswich backline had advanced to the halfway line, Sam Morsy and Jens Cajuste were fighting for second balls midway into the attacking half of the field. Fulham looked to press Ipswich backwards but Woolfenden now had space to spare as last man, speeding away from Raul Jimenez.

Once we’d actually forced Fulham into their rest defence, we moved them around patiently. Out left to Davis, back through midfield, an exchange passes between Woolfenden and O’Shea, into Morsy then forward to Broadhead. Broadhead was the apex of the goalscoring move, first dragging Issa Diop upfield (just as did so many League One defenders), then rolling him, feeding Delap into the space.

As Delap lays the ball back to Davis, Ipswich players are flooding forward. Broadhead back into a little pocket on the edge of the penalty area, Johnson towards the 6-yard box, Sam Szmodics hovering around the penalty spot, Jens Cajuste and even Dara O’Shea tiptoeing to the edge of the area. As Broadhead’s delightful little pitched cross approaches Johnson at the back post, pink shirts are taking over Fulham’s final third.

Ipswich’s threat in away games is about being defensively organised and maintaining their identity when they attack. The way that defensive 5-2-3 flips to a attacking 2-3-5 when we do get quality possession in the opposition half is key. And doing that is a pragmatic risk/reward calculation. It depends on our left back leaping into the forward line not just at 0-0 but also at 2-1 up in the final minutes, to give us the maximum chance of killing the game off rather than hoping to just survive.

Pragmatic? Naive? Principled? Compromised? My words are “calculated”, “adaptable”. The same patterns, same roles, the same shapes, crafted to the situation, not impervious to the opposition’s qualities, but worked out, balanced and adjusted to maximise our chances. Week by week it looks ever likelier to give us a chance in most games. Maybe one day it'll force the critics to work out some more interesting things to say about us.

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Nathan Broadhead v Fulham

Minutes 80

Accurate passes 18/20 (90%)

Chances created 1

Shot accuracy 1/1 (100%)

xG 0.08

xGOT 0.14

xA 0.72

Touches 34

Successful dribbles 3/5 (60%)

Passes into final third 4

Clearances 2

Interceprions 1

Ground duels won 7/12 (58%)

Aerial duels won 0/2

Was fouled 3

Fouled 1

Ipswich's back-to-back games with Chelsea and Arsenal - two of the Premier League's great hegemons - provided plenty of scope to enjoy some more low key qualities in our squad. Our defence was outstanding across both fixtures. In these games you need to be more or less perfect in your organisation and concentration and we were. Though winning one of the two games required a little good fortune, it was by no means out of kilter with two performances that gave us every possible chance.

In the back line Dara O'Shea, fast becoming one of the squad's big leaders, had two fabulous games. Inside him at right centre back Luke Woolfenden was a class act, composed both in possession and whenever he needed to occupy the right square of space at the right time to thwart dangerous opponents. I could write sonnets about our low block over these two games (do check out Shaun Calvert’s excellent guide to our structure against Arsenal).

Further forward all four midfielders who featured across the two games deserved praise. Kalvin Phillips at least partially reversed some of Arsenal's momentum as he opened up his full range of passing in the second half. I will also never tire of watching Jens Cajuste wriggle elegantly through midfield traps.

So many things to enjoy across the pitch, but having resisted talking about him properly for so long after such a compelling performance it's finally time to properly revel in Ipswich's most obvious star. Liam Delap.

I am not always blessed with the gift of much foresight. I watched Delap play against us twice for Hull and saw nothing that notable beyond his rather obvious athleticism. I watched us in preseason and worried we'd paid an outrageous Man City Academy tax for a centre forward who couldn't hold the ball up and didn't know where to press.

At some point between looking a bit lost in a home friendly with Fortuna Dusseldorf and lining up in the first match at Portman Road in August, whatever McKenna had in mind for him clicked. By half time against Liverpool he'd more or less ended poor Jarell Quansah's career, forcing Arne Slot to insert the behemoth Ibrahima Konaté in his stead. An act of mercy.

Delap's power was immediately apparent, the deft first touch and terrifying acceleration revealed themselves over time. Watching him gather momentum with the ball is unlike anything I have ever seen. From a standing start he seems to rumble like a locomotive, gaining force and speed in a way that almost feels gradual. It appears defenders are matching him, but as he approaches top speed there's this unmatchable energy, part physics, part aura. Opponents almost dissolve in his wake. He is the Juggernaut from X-Men, physically unstoppable once in motion.

He runs at you, your legs lose coherence, you backpedal, he shifts the ball and unleashes an unerring howitzer towards goal.

There is much to admire about his team mates, but in truth when he is out of the game, either when absent as he was against Newcastle or when controlled by a powerful fellow mutant like William Saliba, we are so much lesser. The lack of his ever-present threat from any old aimless punt forward invites teams to push ever higher and get increasingly aggressive in working on our various vulnerabilities. Delap in full flow pushes opponents back single handedly, giving everybody more space to operate in.

He is one of the most singular footballers I have ever watched. I think most Ipswich players have some sort of analogue in a past Blue, someone whose play style they vaguely echo. No previous Town player comes to mind for Delap. With his artillery-barrage shot and those runs like a barrel rolling down a hill, the only comparison that occurred to me was a youthful Wayne Rooney.

Rooney though was more surly than joyful, even as a kid. Delap spends a lot of his time with a mischievous grin on his face. He bowls over a full back and grins with pleasure. There's almost a goofiness to him, a sense that all these duels and scraps he gets into are like the serious/play fights that brothers have. It's fun to clatter into someone. It's fun to smash a football as hard as you damn well can. It's fun to run and run and run.

And boy did he have fun with Chelsea.

You generally imagine that powerful strikers like to slide onto the defender least able to cope with their physicality. Against Chelsea Liam must have been tempted to match up with Levi Colwill or even pull onto either full back. But where's the fun in that? Like a new inmate asserting dominance in the prison yard Delap attacked the biggest guy he could find - Tosin Adarabioyo.

Wisely it seemed like he was under instructions to ration his exuberance, presumably in the hope we could extend his stint as deep into the 90 as possible. At times, others were sprinting around frenetically pressing whilst Delap hovered in a mid-block waiting to unleash sudden bursts of happy fury. Maybe not knowing whether he'd be suddenly loping towards them made Chelsea even more nervous.

Delap had two obvious contributions against Chelsea, winning the penalty with a burst of speed and setting up Omari Hutchinson with an interception, a long gallop forward and an intelligent pass. More generally though, knowing our centre forward has the measure of most opponents is just this enormous comfort blanket for everyone. You know sending the ball vaguely in his direction is potentially productive and the opposition do too. It reduced Chelsea's inclination to over-commit, it decreased the sheer amount of defending our (in any case busy) back line had to do. Delap simply makes us better.

He is a phenomenon. He is exhilarating to watch. Even those of us not naturally inclined to just love a goal scorer cannot be anything other than utterly compelled by him. He is unstoppable. The fun juggernaut.

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Liam Delap v Chelsea

Minutes 89

Goals 1

Assists 1

Passes completed 4/8 (50%)

Shots 5

On target 4/5 (80%)

Touches 32

Touches in opposition box 7

Dispossessed 3

Ground duels won 3/8 (37.5%)

Aerial duels won 3/4 (75%)

Recovered the ball 4

Was fouled 3

Fouls 1

1- What do you see?

Sooooo…………….readers of this blog will have seen previous tactical notes about games over the last two seasons, focusing on the shape and structure of Ipswich’s team setup. This season I have looked at the Blues out-of-possession away at Brighton and the division of midfield responsibilities against Everton. In this note, I want to go back over how I see Ipswich playing, building from the basic formation every game and explain how I do my analysis, outlining what I see and what I’m looking for.

First of all, I want to break down the basic starting points and then the phases and sections that I make notes on, ending with some conclusions about the Arsenal game earlier this week.

2- The Basics

Football is really a simple game with two sides, you are either in possession of the ball (attacking) or out of possession of the ball (defending). Each team can decide how to set their 11 players up and Kieran McKenna chooses a 4-2-3-1. Within that certain players or positions ‘roll’ around, moving around depending on:

• How many opposition players have been committed to a certain area.

• What area(s) they are ‘allowing’ the opposition to have the ball.

• Decisions made about how aggressively they try and win ball back, relative to how often they look to ‘sit-off’, keep shape and block off passing lanes.

• Game state and score line, opposition pressure and game momentum, as well as the time left on clock

• ‘Chaotic’ moments such as turnovers and transitions, second phases of set-pieces, etc.

Each team will have an approach based on:

• Their coach’s preferred system.

• How the opposition are set up and prefer to play.

• Players available.

3 - Phases of Play

There are essentially 3 phases of play, dividing the pitch into 3 sections (thirds), making for 6 basic phases in total (3 in possession, 3 out of possession) –

• The 1st phase is build-up from the back for the attacking team, with a corresponding pressing phase for the opposition, who have to decide whether to go with a high line or go to mid-block and what their pressing triggers are (maybe when a pass goes to a certain player, maybe on a weaker foot or maybe when a pass goes backwards into a certain area). This can be split into a further 2 defined sections - goal kicks and when a team wins possession in their defensive third.

• The 2nd phase is possession in central areas. Are they looking to play through the lines or play in behind? For the opposition the main choices are whether to press or go to a low block and whether they look to force them wide, to keep central areas closed off.

• The final phase is in the area of attacking towards the goal and looking to get crosses in or create overloads or get in behind. For the opposition mainly the question is how many players to get behind ball, how many in each defensive line and what to do when they win the ball back.

Other Areas:

• Set plays (can include goal kicks, kick offs, throw-ins, etc, as well as corners and free-kicks).

• Transitions or turnovers.

4 - Match analysis - Having laid out that basic framework, here’s my analysis of the shapes and structures that we say in Arsenal v Ipswich, based on using the above-mentioned phases of play.

Summary:

Arsenal – Base formation of 4-3-3 – attacking width is held by the outside forwards (Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli), with attacking rotations and Declan Rice as the main sitter in midfield (joined in possession by both full backs at times), then Kai Havertz connecting with the forward line and Martin Odegaard, the main creative player, drifting around.

Ipswich 4-2-3-1 – Base Formation of 4-2-3-1 - attacking width is held by Leif Davis (left back) and Johnson (right wing), with 2 centre midfielders and 2 tens, then dropping into a low block in the defensive third, during the attacking final phase of Arsenal’s build-up.

5 - Ipswich - back 4 shown at kick-off

6 - Arsenal – 1st phase of build-up possession

Arsenal mainly played short, trying to build through the lines, with Rice being the main ‘connector’ between the first two lines.

• Arsenal built up mainly in a 2-3-2-3 with both full backs moving into midfield with Rice (sometimes this was a 3-3-2-3 with the GK joining in).

• Ipswich set up out of possession in a 4-4-2 (a “mid-block”) with one of the tens (Omari Hutchinson) joining Liam Delap but generally allowing Arsenal to have the ball in their back line and not aggressively pressing (similar to their approach and shape at Tottenham).

• Arsenal have a 3v2 in their back line and Ipswich have a 4v3 in their back line

7 – Arsenal – 1st phase into 2nd phase

In this example Arsenal build up possession and move around the Ipswich mid-block. After Hutchinson tries to press the Arsenal centre backs split, Rice moves forward and Odegaard drops in to link play.

8 – Arsenal – 1st phase of build-up possession in 2nd half – Arsenal with the same 2-3-2-3 (3-3-2-3 with the GK) but Ipswich now pressing more aggressively in a 4-2-3-1.

9 – Arsenal – 2nd phase of build-up possession – Arsenal 2-3-2-3 / Ipswich 4-4-2.

10 – Arsenal – 2nd phase of build-up possession – examples of rotations:

• 10’ - Havertz and Rice swapping over, meaning Kalvin Phillips follows Havertz and Rice takes the space.

• 13’ – Gabriel Jesus now moves to the left ten or “half space”, with Havertz heading to the middle.

• 35’ – Odegaard in the top line.

• 68’ – Odegaard out to right midfield, Jurrien Timber to right wing and Martinelli comes inside.

11 – Arsenal – Final phase of build-up possession – Arsenal go to 2-3-5 and Ipswich to 5-4-1 to match up 5v5 in the back line and sit in a ‘low block’.

12 – Ipswich – 1st phase build-up possession – in the first half, Aro Muric mostly went long from when the ball was played back to him and from goal kicks or with ball in hand.

One thing to highlight is that from most of the goal kicks, Dara O’Shea went to right wing and Ben Johnson back to right back, to try & have an aerial out ball and height advantage over Miles Lewis-Skelly.

13 – Ipswich – 1st phase build-up possession – when Ipswich did try to play from the back, Arsenal pressed aggressively, man for man, in a 6v6.

14 - Ipswich – 1st phase build-up possession – Now, some examples of Ipswich successfully building out from the back:

• 32’ – Muric plays the ball into Cajuste and then receives it back, with Ipswich in a 3-4-3 and an Arsenal high press to make a 6v6. The ball goes out through Hutchinson, from a Luke Woolfenden pass, with Johnson high wide right (as Wes Burns would be in other games).

• 87’ – Ipswich goal kick, with the centre backs split and right and left backs wide (2-4-2-2) and Arsenal in a 4-4-2.

15 - Ipswich – 2nd phase build-up possession – Ipswich move into a 2-3-2-3 with the right winger (Johnson) high and wide to the right. Arsenal in their 4-4-2, Woolfenden then steps into midfield and Phillips steps into the back line.

16 - Ipswich – final phase build-up possession – very few examples of these but we can see what Ipswich were looking to do in these phases:

• 1’ – Davis provides the width on the left, making an attacking 6 with 2 centre midfielders and the 3 behind Delap.

• 70’ – The right back (O’Shea) goes beyond the right winger (Johnson) with Arsenal set up in a 4-4-2.

17 - Set Plays – as per usual, both sides loaded the back post on corners when attacking and the defending team went with a mixture of zonal and man-marking.

One point of note is that Delap was used as a marker, rather than his usual zonal role, with Phillips taking on a zonal role.

18 – Conclusions

• In my view it was the usual base formation of 4-2-3-1 for Ipswich but because so much of the play, especially in the 1st half (with 86% possession for Arsenal and Arsenal dominance in territory and field tilt), was for Arsenal and the Gunners committed so many players to the attacking top line Ipswich had a 5 in their back line during those phases. This was to match them up, reduce wide overloads and keep short distances to try and prevent balls ‘slid’ down the side of the centre backs. This is something that we have seen on numerous occasions this season and last season too, but it tends not to be so noticeable when an attacking player like Wes Burns is playing right winger.

• This appeared to be as a result in a change of approach / tactics / game plan, rather than formation, with similarities to the games at Man City, Brighton and Tottenham. This is as opposed to the aggressive man for man high press that we adopt in some games (with Newcastle being the most recent). Personnel were chosen to better suit a containing shape and the requirement to drop into a mid then low block (e.g. Johnson at right wing and Sam Szmodics as the left ten).

• As is the case in most games, the 1st half was a more ‘structured’ affair with the game then becoming more ‘chaotic’ in the second half with the disruption of the substitutions whilst Ipswich tried to push for an equaliser and Arsenal became more ‘protective’ of their lead, with Ipswich pressing slightly more and retaining possession with greater efficiency.

19 - That’s all folks, apologies for the length (not a phrase that I get to say often). If you don’t agree with all of the above then I would maybe recommend watching the game back, considering the phases and points above, or just enjoying the excellent performance from Ipswich. Happy New Year!

“That wasn’t very Christmassy”

Jez

Round about this time last year I settled into my seat in the The Plough for Leeds United vs. Ipswich Town. We led the Whites by a decent whack in the league table and had been a little unfortunate to lose to them at a Portman Road. In my lucky Ipswich Christmas socks, I had no inkling of the disastrous forty-five minutes that awaited me. Barely a shot on target, an own goal, a penalty, a set-piece concession and Leeds so dominant there wasn’t even much room to feel sorry for ourselves. Some days you don’t get the rub of the green and lose. Some days the other team are clearly superior and you lose. Some days it’s both and you get tonked.

Having declared last week that competing well was close to giving me an aneurysm, Newcastle decided to ensure that my heart rate remained under control by having this one out of sight by half time. With hindsight they likely already had it won by 4.55pm the previous Saturday, when referee Simon Hooper decided Liam Delap was partially culpable for Wolves’ indiscipline. Newcastle, with their wingers high, wide and aggressive, their midfield suffocating and brutal like a pillow applied to a coma patient, their backline big, looming and front footed, were just a terrible matchup for a team without a target man.

This was all hindsight of course, before the game I was innocently assuming we’d be competitive like usual, even that the surprise of Sammie Szmodics up top might mess with Newcastle’s plans. Out of necessity, we named the smallest possible front line and it all went exactly as it might have done in your worst nightmares. Any hopes of getting on the front foot dashed by a peculiar kick off routine where our entire left flank sprinted forward just in time to see Conor Chaplin sweep the hall out for a throw in on the other side. The ball quickly made its way back to their side, then up and over Cameron Burgess and into an offside looking (but alas not offside being) Jacob Murphy. Murphy is one of those players who, like Michail Antonio, I had filed as “just a decent Premier League player” in my EFL innocence, but who in reality would have been the best winger we faced in league football in any of our previous 20 seasons.

On Saturday he had a day, where even the first unthreatening cross he spammed into the penalty area found its way eventually to Alexander Isak, who just drilled it into the ground and into the goal via Muric’s left hand. Later, he launched an absolute ping in off the cross bar having found himself the free man as Anthony Gordon meandered unmolested round our penalty area. Finally, he was found executing an improbable back heel assist for Alexander Isak to score his third (he wasn’t involved in Isak’s second but the less said about that one the better). Nothing he tried didn’t come off.

Whilst Murphy (and Isak) had a day, I suspect Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimaraes might have proven unplayable on any day for any version of Ipswich Town 2024-25. Saturday’s iteration, striker-less and shorn of the ability to bypass these two ravenous magpies, certainly had no answer to their athleticism, industry or technical ability. There have been some very impressive centre midfield performances against us this season. Ryan Gravenberch eventually ran the show for Liverpool in August and Brighton’s Carlos Baleba was outstanding at the Amex Stadium. I’ve still seen nothing to match these two yet. One volley pass from Guimaraes actually drew a gasp from the home fans. Omari Hutchinson will probably never be more effortlessly shackled in his entire career - Tonali was all over him.

This was all the worst possible combination. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, every pre-match worry you had manifested in front you. Everything we tried played out in exactly the ways Newcastle would’ve hoped. The Magpies handed out a brutal hammering for an hour, then took their foot off the gas.

It was a result that seemed to unleash a lot of soul searching amongst Ipswich fans. Yet whilst it certainly wasn’t a particularly festive afternoon, it did not weigh anywhere near as heavily on me as the Bournemouth game did. My seat neighbour Iain remarked at full time that he’d “never seen me as crestfallen as last Saturday” but I seemed to be taking Saturday’s shoeing in relatively good spirits.

My view was broadly that anyone who did not expect us to get the odd battering this season was deluding themselves. Indeed, we have probably taken fewer of these than I imagined we would in the Summer. Get us on a bad day and opposition on a good one and we will lose, especially when we’re missing key personnel (and absentees count double when you start with a weaker squad).

From here, the aim can’t be to never get beaten badly again (just as well, because we probably have two more of these coming right up). No, the real challenge for us is two-fold. The first part is minimising how many of those bad performances we put in and the number of days we don’t compete in. The count on that front thus far is five from seventeen, so we are actually doing OK in that one. The second part is claiming as many points as we can from those that are within our grasp, something we’re struggling a bit more with. Thus far we’ve managed 12 points from 12 even (admittedly some only even-ish) games, that’s a lot of points (too many) left on the table. It’s Bournemouth (and Fulham, Villa, Man U, Brentford) that’s got us in the bottom three, not Newcastle, Everton or West Ham.

Still, there’s hope in that scenario. As I noted last December, it is tempting to feel like a shellacking like this just exposes “what we really are”. But just like that Leeds hammering didn’t mean we were destined to fall off and wasn’t our “norm”, the particular ways Newcastle pulled us apart won’t apply in every game, neither in terms of how particular calamitous moments panned out, nor in the way their specific strengths met our specific weaknesses. Certainly, we are up against it in this league and should have no illusions about that. We’re certainly favourites to fail, but we are still in this fight and given everyone’s fixtures we will almost certainly still be in it come the New Year.

We might not be feeling very Christmassy right now but all is not lost.

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It’s the fear that once again we won’t get what we deserve. Against Bournemouth, we did so much right. We got our goal, we held at bay one of the most intense, relentless teams I have ever seen at Portman Road. We weathered their storm, we actually looked the likelier scorers going into the final five minutes. Yet I still couldn’t escape the feeling that our fastidiously constructed Jenga tower of a lead was one moment of quality (or one lapse) away from collapse. Every Premier League team intersperses even their worst performance with sublime moments, little bursts of seemingly effortless, terrifying, acceleration. Only on the rare occasions where we’re comprehensively beaten and there’s nothing to lose can I truly sit comfortably.

Wolves epitomised this tendency. On Saturday, they were for collectively, tactically, mentally inferior to Ipswich for 71 minutes. There was no question at all about which team was most coherent in and out of possession, which team had worked out how to bring its best players to bear most effectively. For most of this game Chaplin, Hutchinson, Burns and Delap kept the pressure up. Ipswich found ways of using the ethereal Jens Cajuste to slice elegantly through Wolves’ midfield lines, worked angles to release Leif Davis and Wes Burns in behind the calamitous Matt Doherty and the irritable Rayan Aït-Nouri. Above all they found ways to get Liam Delap into duels with isolated centre backs. Whilst at full power, he really had the measure of any of Wolves’ back three.

It was Delap from an uncomplicated hoik forward that opened the game up. Former Culé Nelson Semedo bounced off the Suffolk steamroller as he made his way to the byline. Delap found Omari Hutchinson, whose feet wouldn’t sort themselves out to stroke the ball home first time, leaving him only the Marcus Stewart route round Sam Johnstone in the Wolves goal. Doherty’s goal-line clearance rebounded to Conor Chaplin, who steadied himself and rifled the ball towards the bottom right corner. It took a little pinball for the ball to end up in the back of the net but it was no less than Chaplin’s composure merited.

Wolves’ threat was meagre thereafter. The assembled Gold shirts mustered just five attempts on goal in the first half, the most significant resulting from Dara O’Shea’s mis-hit clearance. If anything the danger diminished further after the break. Aït-Nouri’s speculative 68^th-minute effort was their first shot in the second period. The Blues had chances of their own in the meantime, Wes Burns’ rasping drive testing Johnstone just after half time, Delap’s faulty connection sending Burns’ cross over with the net gaping ten minutes later. We just don’t seem to have that game-killing goal in us right now.

As the game advanced at 1-0, Ipswich in control, the dull ache returned. Would we find a way to leave three deserved points on the table again? Ragged, petulant, rattled, you still saw plenty of potential menace in Wolves’ moments. Before the game the combination of Aït-Nouri and Matheus Cunha confronting Wes Burns and Harry Clarke down our right had been a concern. Early in the game Cunha had dribbled past Harry Clarke as if he weren’t there, whilst Aït-Nouri’s smart through ball sent the statuesque Jacob Strand Larsen through on goal in the first half. Harry and Wes were coping admirably in general but in Cunha especially you felt Wolves had the biggest individual weapon on either side.

No significant momentum presaged the Wolves leveller. Toti Gomes punted the ball into midfield, after a little head-tennis Mario Lemina landed on the ball and picked out Aït-Nouri. The Algerian slipped in Cunha to the left of the penalty area. His first time near post shot deflected off the retreating Clarke and past Aro Muric’s outstretched right hand.

If the equaliser came from nothing, inevitably a wave of Wolves pressure followed in its wake. The hosts peppered the Ipswich goal. Staggered by the one blow, we rocked back on our heels. We tried to dig in. The colossal Cameron Burgess made two blocks in a minute, first from Stand Larsen then from Cunha. It was all going so well and suddenly it was all collapsing around us.

It was happening again. We all worried after Bournemouth about the weight of our injuries and the depletion of our supporting cast. Ipswich are a fine proposition until Delap and Hutchinson’s races are run, after that the cupboard is a bit too threadbare. Today though, McKenna still had tricks up his sleeve. Shortly before the board went up to note the stoppage time ahead, the spell broke and (remarkably) Ipswich’s substitutes reversed the momentum of the game.

Toti’s loose touch down the left allowed Ben Johnson (on for Burns) to move the ball forward to Hutchinson. Hutchinson carried it forward, he ducked inside Lemina then spread the ball to Davis. Goncalo Guedes recklessly knocked Davis to the floor as he entered the penalty area. Wolves cleared but Ipswich kept coming back at them, O’Shea winning a big header from their clearance. Now Harry Clarke thundered forward, exchanging passes with Ali Al-Hamadi (now on for Delap), before feeding Jack Clarke (in for Chaplin). The left-winger’s attempted shot was blocked but Jack Taylor swept up the rebound. Suddenly there were seven blue shirts thronging the Wolves penalty area. Davis’ cross was cleared and Aït-Nouri briefly hared up the other end, an exchange of failed counter attacks befitting a relegation 6-pointer.

Al-Hamadi, who had looked a little out-of-place in the dying embers of the Manchester United draw was now in full boisterous nuisance mode. Back to goal, in his own half, the Scouse striker held the ball up, rolled Tommy Doyle and set off up field. He exchanged passes with Hutchinson then just seemed to will his way into the penalty area, almost tripping and stumbling past two defenders, before squeezing a shot in.

Now Ipswich, recovering their sense of self, were the only likely winner. Wolves, physical and emotional energy spent, hanging on the ropes, sought long balls to Strand Larsen but each time Burgess would gobble them up and Jack Taylor (subbed in for Cajuste) would then drive Ipswich forward once again. A shot from Hutchinson beaten away, a Jack Clarke through ball just barely cut out, a Leif Davis corner punted inelegantly behind.

One last final corner, the last kick of the game. Two players, both written off by some. Jack Clarke, subject of some rather exaggerated criticism of late, stood over it. Jack Clarke, massive shorts billowing, big price tag and big expectations weighing on his shoulders. Jack Clarke, who had actually been rather good in this cameo, getting on the ball, going past people, gaining us possession and territory. Jack Clarke, who would have remembered any of that positive contribution if we had not won? Jack Clarke, inswinging corner, dropping right into the perfect area.

At the other end of the ball’s arc, Jack Taylor, odd man out in our Championship midfield. Jack Taylor, once of Barnet and Peterborough, soon to be scorer in all five top English divisions. Jack Taylor, one of those surprising McKenna renovations where he discovers a player has this whole other level of quality you never imagined. Jack Taylor, aided by Al-Hamadi’s distractions, arrows his huge, uncontested header past Johnstone and starts sprinting, hollering, screaming, beaming towards the away fans.

The last kick, no time for heart palpitations now. Just hysteria. Pure joy, pure released tension. Nothing to take this away.

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Jack Clarke v Wolves

Minutes 15

Assists 1

Shots 1

Accurate passes 7/8 (88%)

Touches 16

Touches in opposition box 2

Successful dribbles 1/1 (100%)

Passes into final third 1

Accurate crosses 1/1 (100%)

Dispossessed 2

Duels won 3/5 (60%)

The challenge, I told myself, is enormous, but a team in our situation does have advantages. Any club promoted without parachute payments has already done something exceptional. The people in charge of the club have shown their ability to produce outcomes wildly outstripping their resources. Some combination of novel off field structure, skilled recruitment, coaching and matchday tactics must have given us an edge over competitors.

I knew we were always going to be under-powered for the division, but reasoned our 2023-24 wage bill would leave budget headroom that rivals wouldn’t have, allowing us to build. We certainly spent enough to give ourselves a shot at survival, more than most recent Premier League newcomers. The conclusion of this internal dialogue was that with a fair wind, we’d have a decent chance of staying up.

Unfortunately, the trouble with football supporters is that we’re absurdly wedded to hope, so the tendency with “reasoned optimism” is you keep the optimism and abandon the reason.

What counts as a fair wind? Top of the list would be staying relatively free of key injuries. There’s always a lot of chat every transfer window about building squad depth but for me there’s only so much you can do. The more you look to stretch your budget across 25 players, the less money available for your best players and the lower your first team’s ceiling will be. In the real world teams with lots of injuries are just going to be worse, that’s how it is. And if you had less quality to start with, that will probably mean untenably bad.

What else? A fair wind would have been most of our recruitment working out reasonably well, especially the marquee acquisitions. That meant our big investments staying fit, staying in the team and contributing at least somewhere near to expectations, even if not at the levels of our wildest dreams. When you’ve recruited 12 new players, at least 10 implicitly as first team starters, you want to be feeling good about at least two thirds of them.

Lastly, a fair wind was finishing on the right side of at least a middling number of fine margins. Not that you win every week with a massive deflection, an outrageously favourable refereeing decision or a catastrophic opposition error, just that if you’re in even games you’re getting a good share of the spoils and although occasionally you’re getting robbed of some merited points, you’re also committing your own thefts from time to time.

I think it’s safe to say we have been sailing into headwinds in all three areas so far this season. First the big thing that’s (mostly) out of our control – injuries. As of mid-November, we were officially the second most injury prone team in the division, as measured by first team players unavailable for the most amount of time. Axel Tuanzebe and George Hirst are the most obvious misses. Our defensive record with the former is excellent and Hirst gave us the option to manage Liam Delap’s workload with virtually no drop off. Then there’s the less obvious ones. Chieo Ogbene has that Premier League physicality that looked sorely lacking against Forest and Palace and that has often been found wanting in the latter stages of games (not least on Sunday).

That’s just the long-term injuries. Ben Johnson, Harry Clarke, Jacob Greaves, Kalvin Phillips, Jen Cajuste, Jack Taylor, Massimo Luongo, Nathan Broadhead, Wes Burns, Sam Morsy and Ali Al-Hamadi have all missed time in matches and in training that will have hampered their ability to find good form or forge good partnerships.

One result of this is that we’ve spent this three-game week trying to manage players through big workloads or unfamiliar rotations or returns from injury. We had a different right back start each fixture, Cajuste and Taylor awkwardly shared minutes, whilst our oldest player Morsy started and finished all three games. We swapped returning absentee Greaves in for a match-up with Jean-Philippe Mateta for which Cameron Burgess might have been better suited. We’ve had to flog our three best young players. Liam Delap and Omari Hutchinson completed 250 of 270 minutes in seven days, Davis all 270. In the wider forward roles, two starts by the very effective Sammie Szmodics had to be leavened with the seemingly nervous and indecisive Jack Clarke, while Wes Burns and Conor Chaplin took shifts playing wherever Omari wasn’t.

None of this is ideal.

Injuries are one major contributing factor in our second headwind. You suspect that Johnson, Greaves, Cajuste, Phillips and Ogbene were all signed to start games more often than not and all have lost substantial time. That’s nearly half of our Summer signings struggling to get rhythm or form (or permanently unavailable in Ogbene’s case), including the two with the greatest experience in the Premier League.

Johnson looked accomplished against Leicester and Spurs, then missed a few. Greaves looked class then missed a chunk. Cajuste had to work up to being available and doesn’t seem to have 90 minutes in him yet. Kalvin Phillips has had periods in games where he looked ready to dominate proceedings, culminating in looking the part (but getting sent off) against Leicester, before disappearing with a mystery ankle injury. He now enigmatically remains on our subs bench in scenarios where he would surely be useful.

The rest of the twelve includes one signed with the hope he’d be involved as little as possible (Conor Townsend), Jack Clarke, who I think it’s fair to say has not yet met our expectations for him and Aro Muric, who is excellent in all aspects of modern goalkeeping except one of the most important ones – decision-making. That leaves us with four that have broadly met or exceeded expectations – Omari Hutchinson, Dara O’Shea, Sammie Szmodics and Liam Delap. Of late, even Delap and Hutchinson have looked hamstrung by their workloads.

Not a viable hit rate.

How far you think we’ve been hard done-by in terms of outcomes and performances is in the eye of the beholder. What I think is undeniable is that we have left a lot of points on the table that the balance of play has put within our grasp. We have drawn three home games (Fulham, Villa, Man U) where we finished in the ascendancy and one more where we were clearly superior until a debatable sending off. We lost two games in their dying embers because of almost inexplicable goalkeeping errors. We lost two further tight encounters to single goals.

Now, I know every fan tots up their mis-fortunes like this, forgetting anything that went their way. Brighton were superior to us in every way bar the scoresheet. Southampton were good value for their 1-0 win and we didn’t really merit our late deflected equaliser. Spurs might have equalised late on. That is to say it wouldn’t have taken much more going wrong for us to be sat here bottom of the league with 5 points and 0 wins. Equally, I don’t think the mid-point between us getting all the fine margins and none of them is 1 win and 9 points.

Not a lot of help from the fates.

Now, the intention of this blog is not a form of special pleading. The league table is not lying and we are in a scenario of our own making. Nobody forced us to conduct our Summer transfer business in the way that we did and “fine margins” is often fancy talk for screwing up or just not getting the job done. Whilst it is certainly true that we could have taken 4 points from our last two home games by just managing a couple of moments more, we didn’t and both Palace and Bournemouth were clearly superior to us. Nothing about the statistics underlying our drift into the relegation zone really speak to a team that deserves to be higher than 18^th.

This is no call to feel sorry for ourselves. It is a reminder, to myself more than anyone, that my reasoned assessment was that we would have a decent chance of staying up if we got a fair wind. As it happens, we have sailed into something of a perfect storm – injuries, recruitment struggles, tripping over almost each and every fine margin we can find. So, recovering my reason, why should I be surprised at where we find ourselves?

The last week has revealed we probably aren’t good enough to stay up in the face of these gale force winds. Rationally, we were never likely to be. Yet, rational self-preservation still isn’t enough to sweep away my optimism. Even now, there’s something in this team that still insists to me that we have a chance. It rears its head from time to time, against Spurs and Man U and for most of Bournemouth. Whilst we wait for clearer skies, we just have to hope those winds don’t sweep us away entirely and that we’re still upright, still together, can still believe, if and when anything starts to turn our way.

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Conor Chaplin v Bournemouth

Goals 1

Shots 5

Accurate passes 27/36 (75%)

xG 0.48

xGOT 0.65

Shot accuracy 1/3 (33%)

Blocked shots 2

Touches 53

Touches in opposition box 4

Successful dribbles 1/1 (100%)

Passes into final third 3

Accurate crosses 0/2

Dispossessed 2

Tackles won 1/2 (50%)

Blocks 1

Defensive actions 4

Ground duels won 3/5 (60%)

Aerial duels won 1/3 (33%)

Was fouled 0

Fouls 1

I have all these standard feelings. They might produce a paean to a high performer, praise for McKenna and his side, measured thoughts, rage or impotent fretting. I don’t know if I have a straightforward take on Nottingham Forest 1 Ipswich Town 0. Forest are in that category of Premier League opponent that feels like a scalable mountain. It’s damn hard scrabbling up Snowden but it isn’t Mount Everest. I had a bad feeling before Saturday’s game but it is not quite a defeat you can shrug your shoulders at. There are too many Nottingham Forests in this division to lose to all of them and not get cut adrift. You do need to slog up some of these big hills.

Yet I’m not convinced we did a tremendous amount wrong in this one. We were defensively solid and mostly contained the impressive Morgan Gibbs-White. The burly Elliott Anderson was likewise kept under control. Incidentally, since when did number tens start appearing in such a build? Him and Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers look like the muscle for a mafia boss, but somehow also have the first touch of Juan Roman Riquelme. Jota Silva and Callum Hudson-Odoi were flighty, frivolous, mostly unthreatening, certainly until we obliged the former with one rash step.

Now, we weren’t exactly ripping Forest to shreds at the other end. Conor Chaplin was doing a great job wriggling out of tackles, into space and feeding his wingers but Murillo in his enormous shorts (Jack Clarke must have been jealous) and Nikola Milenkovic were guarding the penalty area with considerable proficiency. They were as sturdy a partnership as we have faced this season.

Yet we were doing what decent away sides must – keeping it tight, taking the sting out of the game, riding out pressure, winning attacking set pieces. Cameron Burgess’ 23^rd minute header from Leif Davis’ corner was probably the game’s best opening before the break (Hudson-Odoi had a better one but refused to shoot for some reason, very peculiar player). Chaplin might have had an even clearer sight had his centre forward not got in his way for the second game running. Perhaps he needs to up the volume when he calls for the ball?

And so to the second half. Four minutes in one of those totally justified penalties that nevertheless feels like harsh punishment. One leg needlessly inserted in just the wrong place, not denying a good goalscoring opportunity nor wiping out an opponent. No, just landing disastrously in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only a modicum of blame for Sammie Szmodics. His interjection was scarcely more reckless or foolish than dozens of other clumsy legs thrown around in almost every football match. Sometimes calamity just calls for you. Nonetheless, it lost us the game.

Even after Chris Wood had dispatched the penalty we still more or less did the things an away team needs to do. We stayed in the game, we didn’t concede again, we gradually pushed the home side back towards their own penalty area. We tried, where we could, to play the percentages, taking long shots, throwing in crosses and winning attacking set pieces. Forest though were extremely adept at blocking angles and harrying wannabe shooters. There was seldom enough daylight to “take a dig”.

They never felt in much trouble, but it felt like it was more their defensive efficiency rather than our attacking deficiency that was the main cause. The best team in the division failed to break them down after going behind, so our struggles were perhaps understandable. We probably aren’t the only team in the division lacking the ability to break down a good, compact Premier League defence in “manage the game” mode without scoring a worldie, a set piece or a fluke and we gave ourselves a decent enough chance of getting one of those.

Ultimately though, it was a game we lost because of a moment and a game we might have won with just one fortuitous moment. What do you do with that sort of defeat? Not one you can resign yourself to but, really, just one of those afternoons. Not a performance you could praise, but equally not one you can really get angry about.

We could do worse than make every away close enough to be settled by just a moment and if we do, we’ll still have plenty more unsatisfactory afternoons like Saturday. No complaints, I suppose. No complaints with us, no complaints with them, no complaints with the referee, no complaints with fate. No complaints, just disappointment. Disappointment that those fine margins continue to stand between us and that last little step up in results. That moment where we really convince as potential survivors.

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A lot of attention and hype but in truth, beyond the Amorim fuss, it struck me how little national interest there was in the actual football match. No-one showed much curiosity about the hosts for Manchester United's big day or asked Amorim what he expected to face in Suffolk. Gary Neville spent the buildup doing some rent-a-gob stuff about fancy footballers and their fancy holidays (apparently Luke Woolfenden's trip to Dubai really got his goat) before joining all his mates in glibly predicting a Manchester United win. Not much expectation about or interest in Ipswich, despite us winning our prior game away against far superior opposition.

In the Premier League you get used to weeks where the circus is in town but as hosts you have all the status of a gang of local labourers hired to put up the big tent. All the talk was about West Manchester/Trafford’s new Ringmaster. How was he going to arrange his cast of previously underwhelming performers? A thousand articles on whether Ruben Amorim would go for his favoured 3-4-3 formation straightaway, to be followed shortly by a thousand articles on his players' inability to make it work. The circular nature of the debate drove Jamie Redknapp on Sky Sports into an almost existential despair. Channelling fictional player-pundit Roy Kent, he contemplated the futility of his own existence, “you’re going to try and analyse it, it’s almost pointless.”

After 90 seconds it looked worryingly like the names at the top of the playbill would also be the stars of the show. André Onana in goal zipped the ball out to Noussair Mazraoui, the right back playing right centre half. From Mazraoui it went into right winger-cum-right back Amad Diallo, who exchanged passes with Bruno Fernandes, before dashing into space. Jens Cajuste missed his tackle and suddenly it was 4 on 2 for the visitors. Diallo drove into the box and crossed to Marcus Rashford to score past a hesitant Aro Muric.

Square pegs thriving in round holes. Off the back of two training sessions, Amorim’s first line-up looked silly and precipitous to me. I have never been too impressed by managers who put ideology before praxis. This line-up was so peculiar it had me worried that he must have some special sauce guaranteed to make his preferred tactics instantly understandable to the most arrogant and uninterested superstar. Those anxieties were heightened when one of his much vaunted wing backs had an instant impact, as did his decision to field the Stratford End’s current scapegoat de jour Marcus Rashford up front.

Teams often get a jolt of energy from a change of manager but in reality the “new manager bounce” is usually just a “progression to the mean”. Underperforming players playing under systems and people they’ve lost confidence are often quick to float back towards their normal level when conditions change. As they do so the absolute last thing you want to do is give them instantaneous proof of concept.

We did that and yet it didn’t seem to matter too much. United had a composed 15 to 20 minutes in the wake of their goal but offered little threat. As the match went on it turned out the travelling circus was much less interesting than the locals making their own fun. Ipswich’s own intriguing acts merited their place under the big top.

Roll up, roll up come watch The Amazing Strongman Liam Delap twirl lesser men round his head! Marvel at the strength, agility and poise of young acrobat Omari Hutchinson! Behold with awe Sam Morsy, the man who breathes fire! Come be amazed by the telepath Leif Davis, he knows where you’re going before you do!

Most impressive of all – the high wire act! You will stare open-mouthed, as a defender you once worried might lack the pace to get too tight to Cambridge United’s Joe Ironside, flies forward against Manchester bloody United in a line so high up that even Ange Postecoglou must have been shouting “cor, bit brave that, mate” at his TV. People talk about taking risks in possession as a bit much for promoted teams, but if anything we take our life in our hands even more out of possession. We were throwing Dara O’Shea and Cameron Burgess deep into Manchester United’s half, smothering Rashford and Fernandes out of the game.

Man United had their a passage of fairly sterile possession in both halves but spent long periods penned in and looking to play lofted balls over the top for their runners. At times you had a queasy, vertiginous sensation watching Garnacho, Rashford, Diallo sprint away, but a player in blue and white always managed to get back and calmly neutralize things. Tuanzebe arresting Garnacho’s advance, Morsy sliding in on Rashford, O’Shea blocking Fernandes. all lovely examples. One exhilarating chase back and sliding interception by Jens Cajuste drew a standing ovation.

Ipswich’s attacking play was no less ambitious, nor less composed. The points were shared only because of Onana’s outstanding shot stopping and a shortage of attacking options on Ipswich’s bench. He denied Delap twice even though the England Youth picked his spot well on each occasion. It took a healthy deflection on that ¡HUTCHINSON! drive to get anything past the agile Cameroonian.

The presentable chance that fell to Conor Chaplin in the 86^th minute might still have provided a fairy tale ending had it been his perennial partner George Hirst clearing a space for him rather than the less familiar Ali Al-Hamadi getting somewhat in his way. Oh, how I’d have loved to see Conor smashing that one home.

Disappointing (again) not to get all the points. Nevertheless, a point from this that would have seemed like a utopian dream after West Ham and Everton. These positive, competitive matches are now beginning to seem normal, predictable even. Even as we dropped (narrowly) back into the bottom three, it feels like Ipswich are kicking things up a notch. The upper range of our late summer performances is now our median. I’m gradually coming to expect to be on a par with most opponents, rather than hoping just to give them a decent game.

That already is quite the achievement for McKenna. As Ruben Amorim is about to discover, there’s almost nothing quite as hard in football management as quickly reinventing a football team in flux. To recruit almost an entirely new first eleven, to face more injuries than any other team, to use almost every single player in his squad (Broadhead would’ve completed the set on Sunday, had he not also been injured) and still look this coherent, cohesive and aggressive, to look more than the sum of your parts already, is quite the feat.

Not only are the new boys looking at home but the old boys you worried about, the ones we acquired for less than a week of Kalvin Phillips’ wages, are kicking on week by week (these were season best performances from Cameron Burgess and Wes Burns). In the past two games we fast-forwarded the schedule and to me it now feels likelier than not that we stay up.

Positive results in 7 out of 12 matches, if we keep that going we’ll have to finish the wrong side of an awful lot of fine margins to go down. Indeed, our tendency to leave points on the table when they’re there for the taking, continued here, is now my only real concern. Still, the circus came to town but we were nobody’s support act. It was fun gate-crashing the big show. Can you gate-crash your own party?

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Wes Burns v Manchester United

Minutes 82

Assists 1

Accurate passes 15/20 (75%)

Chances created 3

Touches 33

Touches in opposition box 1

Successful dribbles 1/3 (33%)

Accurate crosses 1/6 (17%)

Accurate long balls 1/5 (20%)

Dispossessed 1

Recoveries 7

Duels won 1/5 (20%)

Bent’s first senior strike gave Ipswich our last Premier League win. Though at the time they filled me with foolhardy belief, the three points gained were welcome but insufficient. Ipswich remained two points behind Sunderland in 17^th with only defeats to Manchester United and Liverpool still to come. Between that win and our next, 8,236 days, nine Ipswich managers and 7 British prime ministers passed. Liam Delap was born and his father played a further 230 Premier League games. Gareth Southgate, who missed a late chance for Middlesbrough that day, retired and led England to three international tournament near misses. Myspace came and went. I graduated, emigrated, re-emigrated, changed profession, moved house 9 times. The average cost of a pint went from £2.10 to £4.70.

It was worth the wait. Whilst we fought our way to no wins and five points in ten games there was a lot of discussion about whether the Premier League might just be no fun. But there can be joy (alongside all the other emotions too) in fighting a battle in which you know you’re overmatched. Just wait, I thought, because beating someone good is going to hit like ecstasy. After the referee’s final whistle blew, I floated out of the Spaceship-cum-shopping-centre that is the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium just a little vibrating ball of endorphins, LIAM DELAP OLÉ OLÉ OLÉ drumming through me like the bass in a warehouse rave.

I’m sure the buzz would have been there regardless of the performance. Ten games and more than three months is a lot of build-up and even an obviously undeserved smash and grab would have still felt special.

This wasn’t that. Ipswich’s triumph over Tottenham begged very few questions. Six years ago we posted our first win in our twelfth match, an absolute robbery by a team that was getting worse not better, where the three points were the only positive. A day where every shot went in and the opposition were criminally profligate. Not on Sunday. We even contrived to miss our early chances, to the point that I started worrying about it. We made more clear openings than our illustrious opponents and whilst Aro Muric had a very good game, no miracles were required of him. After Everton I had rather resigned myself to limping into the third international break and hoping things might pick up as injured players returned. Instead we’ve had three weeks of improvement, with both result and quality of play against Tottenham feeling very replicable.

Afterwards much media attention naturally rested on Tottenham’s inconsistency, referencing “Spursiness” as well as a more recent coinage: “Dr. Tottenham”, able to revive any ailing patient. Yet Spurs’ home record against bottom half sides under Ange Postecoglou offers little support to such notions. They won nine out of ten such fixtures last season and three out of three this time out. Perhaps this one was more down to Dr. McKenna.

Of course, I must remind myself that seeing a solitary migratory bird doesn’t necessarily mean the solstice is imminent. Still, my confidence grows that we can move beyond the inconsistency and imbalance that marked many of our October fixtures.

Some of our recent improvement has been about taking comfort in old hands. Neither started this one, but I wrote previously of my joy in seeing Conor Chaplin and George Hirst leading from the front against Brentford. Over the past three games Cameron Burgess had gone from steady(ish) but clearly stretched to composed and comfortable. Omari Hutchinson’s contribution was massive here and he was deservedly singled out for praise on MOTD2. The return of Axel Tuanzebe ahead of schedule was manna from heaven, we conceded as many goals in the four matches he missed as we did in the seven he’s played in, despite him playing in most of our hardest fixtures. McKenna was quick to reference the contributions of longer standing players in his post-match interview.

I am always primed to give those boys their flowers, but Sunday afternoon I started learning to love more of the new acquisitions. The charms of the juggernaut Liam Delap had won us all over weeks ago and are too obvious for me to bother detailing them here, so I’ll press on with talking about the rest.

What do you need against the most physically relentless pressing team in the league? A centre midfielder with the strength and technique to wriggle through as many aggressive pressers as you can throw at him. Tottenham hunted and harried, but time and again Jens Cajuste tunnelled his way out (with considerable elegance) to stretch his legs in open spaces. Between him, Morsy and Phillips (plus Luongo and Taylor) we look well set for the long winter.

Ben Johnson had already thrown off any remaining rust against Leicester and he was equally superb here playing in the right-wing back role. The feeling you had earlier in the season that he was tactically a poor fit for our system has dissipated as the McKenna patterning begins to settle. He managed to play a key role in both goals, setting the ball back for Cajuste to cross for the first and finally bringing some calm to a chaotic passage of play in our own third with a glorious first touch to drag Leif Davis’ hurried clearance out of the air.

At centre back I’m finally ready to warm up to Dara O’Shea, despite still being president of the Official Luke Woolfenden Fan Club. A few weeks ago I was mithering about the club perhaps prioritising athleticism at the expense of game understanding in this bit of recruitment, but O’Shea really was astonishingly good in this one. Two moments in quick succession stood out. Four minutes left and James Maddison found a fast straight ball through to Son Heung-min in space down the left. Plenty of green grass to gallop into and O’Shea was furiously backpedalling. Son shifted the ball right and O’Shea read it wonderfully, perfectly timing a jab tackle with his left foot to take the ball. Clean. Forty seconds later and Yves Bissouma found another progressive pass, this time to Timo Werner. Werner managed to take Tuanzebe on the dribble, but O’Shea read the situation, accelerating to take every inch of the space the wide man wanted to claim. By the time the Stuttgarter looked up all his options were gone and O’Shea’s tackle was simple.   

I found new appreciation for all of them during the 90 minutes in North London. However, the new boy really winning the race to this middle-aged man’s heart is Samuel Joseph Szmodics. I said last season that sometimes the best value signings are to be found when you set aside “player trading” and just go out and get an older player who will do the job. What would a 20-year-old with Szmodics’ goalscoring record last season cost you? Certainly a lot more than £8m.  

Szmodics is fleet of foot and quick in his thinking. He works relentlessly. He’s the kind of spiky wind-up merchant who gets under the skin of the opposition. I saw a Spurs fan on social media post pre-kick-off that he didn’t mind if any Ipswich player scored “apart from that little c*** Szmodics”. When on Earth did ex-Colchester, Peterborough and Blackburn forward Sammie Szmodics have time to irritate Spurs fans? I suppose some players just have that delightful ability to rattle cages.

Above all, even when his team-mates have seemed frayed and frenetic, he’s looked nerveless. He’s spent his entire career in the EFL but doesn’t look fazed by the grandeur of his new surroundings, perhaps because, as he rather charmingly told Town TV recently, playing for Colchester United was all he wanted to achieve in football. All of this is just a well-earned bonus. He’s not over-thinking things, he’s just taking the opportunities that come his way and as a result he’s in the top 15 per cent of wingers and attacking midfielders for shot attempts (top 2% for goals scored!), despite being in the bottom 5 per cent for touches of the football.

Making the most of scraps. For our first, he beat a cluster of white shirts to a dropping loose ball then executed a perfect overhead kick. It was all desire, self-belief, improvisation and skill. For our second, he looked for all the world like he’d tweaked his groin shortly beforehand. Maybe the little shithouse was just kidding his marker into switching off because he was suddenly sprinting past Cristian Romero on the underlap and flashing the ball across for Delap. Clinical, combative, clever. He’s everything you want in a relegation scrap.

After a few weeks wondering whether we’d spent a fortune to stand still, we’re starting to see so much of it pay off. Delap and Greaves looked serious assets straightaway, but now Muric, Johnson, O’Shea, Cajuste, Hutchinson and Szmodics all look increasingly canny investments. At one point I worried I might never warm to the new boys, but now I’m counting the days until I can watch them all again.  

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Sammie Szmodics v Tottenham Hotspur

Minutes played 71

Goals 1

Shots 2

Accurate passes 10/16 (63%)

Expected goals 0.43

Expected goals on target 1.41

Shot accuracy 2/2 (100%)

Big chances missed 1

Touches 32

Touches in opposition box 5

Passes into final third 1

Accurate crosses 0/2 (0%)

Dispossessed 2

Tackles won 2/2 (100%)

Clearances 1

Dribbled past 1

Duels won 3

Duels lost 4

“Fuck ‘em and their Law”

Their Law, The Prodigy

I don’t ordinarily swear on here and certainly not in the title. This is a family blog after all, but sometimes that’s all that comes to mind.

In this one Ipswich Town were, whatever dubious delusions Steve Cooper was willing to entertain afterwards, comfortably the better side. Between Stephy Mavadidi’s third-minute line fluff and the 86^th minute the Foxes had barely had a shot in anger. 83 minutes is more than double the 40 we managed to stay on top against Brentford and had we been anywhere near as clinical this would have been over long before the “series of unfortunate events” turned the tide for the away team.

A defensive unit of Aro Muric, Ben Johnson, Dara O’Shea, Cameron Burgess and Leif Davis was four fifths of what we originally intended to start the season with, before injuries to Johnson and Tuanzebe’s good form intervened, and it played like a plan that had come together.

When his focus isn’t wavering Aro Muric is an imposing Premier League goalkeeper. His best performance since Brighton, which also came after a week of getting criticised. Goalkeepers are weirdos so maybe he needs a bit of abuse to get in the zone. At right back Johnson had the tricky Mavadidi in his pocket and as the game went on his and O’Shea’s front foot defending helped pen Leicester into their own half. Burgess looked unruffled defensively and less like he was playing at his limit than previously. As for Leif Davis, well, if Thomas Tuchel isn’t already looking up his phone number that’ll be his first mistake as England manager.

Further forward, Phillips and Morsy dovetailed as well as at any point this season, though with hindsight we could have done with Jens Cajuste cutting short their partnership by 60 seconds or so. Leif Davis’ beautiful caress past Mads Hermansen will generate more hype, but Morsy’s cross field pass was pretty luscious too.

For the second week running we looked well-organised across the front line in and out of possession. With Omari Hutchinson wide he seemed harder to double up on. Conor Chaplin was elusive, he used the ball well, he had the self-belief to take shots on. If we could somehow transfuse his decisiveness into the rest of our forwards we’d be well set. He makes our attack better. Sammie Szmodics had a quieter game but is the sensible choice for his relentless harrying. Liam Delap remains a brutal specimen of human.

All proceeded according to plan. We were superior but didn’t find the final touch in the first half. Second half we were still on top and ten minutes in found a fabulous goal. Things continued to meander onwards for the twenty minutes that followed. Leicester pushed up a bit but only had potshots.

Then came the “series of unfortunate events”.

A throw-in down the left, Davis to Delap. Delap rolled Fatawu and drove towards the penalty area. Ndidi clipped his heels. Free kick. A pause in play as Ipswich replaced Szmodics and Hutchinson with Jack Clarke and Wes Burns. Jens Cajuste was stripped and ready, presumably to replace Phillips, but fate wasn’t having that.

Phillips and Davis stood over the free kick. The angle worked for a right footer and Kalvin might have taken it, but he’d recently smashed one into the wall, so fate wasn’t having that one either. Instead Leif hoiked the ball onto O’Shea’s head at the back post. Dara might have gone for goal with his free header, but he’d missed one earlier, so headed it back into “an area”.

Hermansen might have caught and held the ball, ending the move, but instead flapped it to Chaplin. Chaplin controlled it and jinked inside. Fatawu could have let him shoot through bodies, but instead hit Chaplin like a defensive lineman blitzing a quarterback. Referee Tim Robinson could have blown for a penalty but just stood there.

The ball squirmed out to Facundo Buonanotte who mis-kicked to Davis. Davis knocked it to Phillips, who might have been tackled but expertly popped the ball over his marker. In the next touch he might have steadied himself. Instead, spurred on by a crowd raucous and raging, he took another, impetuous touch, over-running the ball. He contested the clearance, he was late, he tried to pull out, he caught Ricardo Pereira.

As play stopped, Ipswich arms were spread wide, questioning and pleading for that penalty. Leicester’s players took a moment to register there might be a sending off to be had. Bodies then surrounded the official, words in his ear. Referee Tim Robinson could have stopped to think. Phillips wasn’t arresting a promising counter attack, the tackle was neither reckless nor endangering and he attempted to pull out of it. The referee could have found a reason not to issue a game-changing second yellow card. Phillips was dismissed. The video assistant referee Stuart Atwell might then have intervened to award a penalty. He demurred.

It took 17 minutes and another 50-50 call in Leicester’s favour for the series of unfortunate events to have their full effect and rob us of a well-earned lead. Ten games, just us and Wolves left in #NoWinsClub. Wedged firmly into the bottom three. Spurs and Manchester United to come.

Yet, I am not discouraged. Sometimes it is good to leave furious rather than miserable. And, boy, was I furious. More furious than I’ve been at a group of officials in two decades. I like to think I am phlegmatic about most refereeing decisions. This blog is not full of laments about the men and women in the middle. I can stand error. Referees in the EFL make split-second decisions in front of baying crowds. What constitutes a foul is subjective – a matter of personal judgement not objective truth. I know I am a partisan judge and I never feel wronged for too long.

Yet Saturday burst the dam. Not because of error. Though I felt Chaplin should have had a penalty, Phillips should not have got a red and Morsy should have got his 94^th minute free kick, I have seen enough Ipswich fans accepting of the last two to concede maybe they were just 50-50 decisions. I might even take the penalty non-award as just an error, one of those things.

Mistakes don’t get me, but unfair process does. This is where the evil that is VAR comes in. Having an on-field refereeing team make instant decisions is a flawed but consistent process. It is the same for everyone. The officials make judgements in real time. They make errors but the process is always the same. I never had any sense that bad decisions for or against us in the EFL reflected anything other than the luck of the draw.

VAR complicates the process. It takes the real-time judgement at full speed, by a close-attending official who can see, hear and feel momentum, force and reaction, then overlays it with another decision by someone viewing slow-motion and still images. The second process takes time and no one wants to wait, so they rush it.

The two sets of information are often contradictory, so yet more instructions must be issued to prioritise the first, on-field, judgement over the second judgment. These addendums, though phrased in a language of objectivity - “clear and obvious” - introduce yet more subjectivity. What is “clear and obvious” to me might be “open to question” to another. No incident is alike, so no single standard is possible. Where speed is king, mistakes inevitably follow. Where process is constantly messed with, complexity and confusion comes. Where subjectivity reigns, unconscious bias and arse-covering rules.

Thus far this season, Ipswich are zero to three on VAR interventions. “Ref’s Call” was the mantra pre-season. It took until Matchday Two for “Video Ref’s Call” to give a penalty for Leif Davis’ trip on Savinho at the Etihad. On-field primacy had been restored before half time, when Davis was bundled over in the other penalty area. The bar for “clear and obvious” was located conveniently somewhere between the two incidents.

Against Everton, at full speed on-field referee Michael Oliver felt that Dwight McNeil had illegally interjected his leg into Jack Clarke’s backswing. The video ref thought it “clear and obvious” from a video still that McNeil’s leg had been planted there (possibly at the dawn of time) and Clarke had irrationally decided his shooting action could somehow pass through it. Ref’s call but not for thee.

Last week, the on-field referee Lewis Smith decided at full speed that the “contact with consequence” that Harry Clarke exerted on Keane Lewis-Potter took place outside the penalty area, even if both players eventually fell into the box. That time “ref’s call” apparently didn’t even need to be respected because where a foul takes place is not a question of subjective judgement but an objective fact, so we were spared the formality of Smith going to the monitor.

Much of the first year of the history degree I teach on is dedicated to discussing what it is to know a historical fact.1 Next year I might suggest we skip any discussion of post-structuralist and materialist conceptions of history and have the students proceed directly to debating the PGMOL’s definitions of subjectivity and objectivity. Potential coursework question, “To what extent can one know empirically what constitutes the beginning and end of a foul?”

In my, admittedly partisan, estimation, Fatawu on Chaplin was as clear a penalty as Davis on Savinho, and Robinson’s original decision was less defensible than in the cases of McNeil on Clarke (J) and Clarke (H) on Lewis-Potter. Yet that’s not really the galling thing. My first reaction to hearing about the “Ref’s Call” directive was that it would be something else for officials to be inconsistent over. To properly work, the video refs would have to let some bad decisions stand and stick to their guns when they caught flak for it. 

Inevitably this would be something they would feel more comfortable doing against lower profile clubs, where the price for letting the original call stand was just Gary Lineker having a chuckle about it on MOTD. The result of this process from our perspective is that VAR feels like a fail-safe for ensuring Ipswich Town don’t get any big marginal calls. Got away with a free kick close to the edge of the box? Not so fast, buh. Softish penalty? Yoink, not for you.

Clear and obvious penalty you haven’t got? Well, the bar for overturning these things is very high, see. The mechanics of this machine are designed to chew us up and spit us out.

I suppose I could find a way to rationalise all this. Maybe, these are just the same old marginal calls that every football supporter up and down the land complains about. However much a pattern seems to be forming, they all have their individual explanations, even if sometimes that explanation is just “we made a mistake” or “bad luck, tough titty”.

But sometimes isn’t it better to take the fury home with you? Right now, I’d rather leave angry than dejected. Anger is an energy and I am energised as all hell now. We played well and they scammed us out of our two points. So what? That’s nothing. We have 28 games to make more points. Leicester maintained almost their entire first team from last season and even with our complicated summer refurbishment we’re already better than they are and improving. I’ll take our odds on catching five points on that lot.

After ten games, we are 18^th. We have led in five games and not won. We’ve got half a point a game. We have pundits giggling at our players and manager. People are writing off our boys, both the new signings and old hands, but we can see so many of them kicking on in front of us. I swear something is brewing here.

For a few weeks the only thing to do was get depressed because our own errors were killing us. Now we’re furious because of soft yellows, every marginal call going against us, one-sided VAR interventions. We’re angry and we’re mobilised. Fuck ‘em. No justice, just us.2 Let’s go.

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I am sparing myself (and all of you) a week of that. I watched Brentford at home whilst caring for my 5-month old baby Nathaniel, desperately trying to manage his emotions (largely food, digestion and sleep related) and mine (largely “how well can these eleven men play football” related). This was largely a failure. Bryan Mbuemo’s late winner forced a howl in agony from me, waking poor Nathaniel from his afternoon nap. I was furious. He was furious. Literally, “Son’s crying now, cheers”. I was still trying to calm him as Liam Delap’s shot slammed against the post.

All this on top of the game itself being utter chaos. Before kick-off we got an unexpected line-up, learning of three more key absentees in Omari Hutchinson, Sam Morsy and Jack Taylor, plus Jack Clarke and Liam Delap dropping out of the starting eleven. At that point with no midfielders on the bench, key defensive personnel missing and neither of Kalvin Phillips and Jens Cajuste having regularly completed 90 minutes for us, I sort of decided to give us a free pass for this one.

Then we spent 40 minutes executing our game plan perfectly. We pressed coherently and efficiently, we controlled the midfield, we made good decisions in the final third. We defended our box well, getting first contact on set pieces and long throws. This was it! Then it all crumbled inside 10 minutes. Then it miraculously de-crumbled five minutes from the end. Then we conceded to a weird bit of goalkeeping

Well, I’m not touching any of that. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth. Who knows what it will all mean for the future of our season. Maybe this Phillips-Cajuste midfield is our future, maybe the attacking patterns are finally coming together, maybe chucking a two-goal lead means we’re just too flimsy to survive. Whatever. No, not doing it.

Today, I’m just going to enjoy talking about some of my boys having a good game.

Conor and George

Aside from regularly getting pumped, one of the main downsides of getting promoted is watching most of your favourites fall by the wayside. You form this intense bond with a group of players, you spend months humming their song on your way to work, then a little while later you feel complicit in their marginalisation and disappearance. “We can’t be sentimental. The club has to be ruthless”, you tell yourself. “What’s got us here, won’t get us there” to quote Mark Ashton.

Well, damn it. I am sentimental. I miss that team. One of the promotion boys having a good game just means more to me right now. Conor Chaplin had brought energy from the bench a couple of times this season, looked threatening in the dying embers of the Everton home game. He had earned a start even if he probably wouldn’t have got it without Omari Hutchinson suddenly falling ill.

Too small, too slow for Premier League football? Not when you have Conor Chaplin’s application and intelligence. Unlike in our last two outings, our forward press was actual pressure, with Chaplin prominent. In possession Chaplin found the pockets of space that feel like they’ve often eluded Omari this season. Perhaps he passed under Brentford’s radar.

His big moment came in the 31^st minute. The ball loose on halfway, Chaplin read it first, knocked the ball past Christian Norgaard, shooed Sammie Szmodics away, before nailing his left footed through ball to his big brother George Hirst. A lovely all-round performance that deservedly saw Conor Chaplin put a notch in his Premier League Goal Contributions column. 

Conor’s big moment had to be in conjunction with George. It had to be. Last season was all about the covalent bonds. Gangly George and compact Conor were symbiotic, not just in the passes they made to each other but also in the runs one made to free the other, the complimentary angle of their pressing, that bloody golf celebration.

George was another who’d had good cameos already. But there’s always something deceptive about substitute appearances. If you’re chasing a game and defenders are conserving energy and managing the game, sometimes it’s easier to be the sub sent on to up the tempo. Repeating it from the start is different.

George had two moments. For the first he tussled with Ethan Pinnock, flicked the ball round the corner and was away. The pass was an perfect invitation, right into the swing of Sammie Szmodics right boot. One nil. The second was a great run and a lovely, composed dink past Mark Flekken.

George is big and eats up ground, a more naturally Premier League athlete than his buddy, but for me they both share match intelligence as a key attribute. There’s craft in the way he links play, geometry in the way he presses, nous in the off the ball movement. You wonder if there’s a data point in our recruitment algorithms that quite captures a player’s uncanny ability to read the game and find its spaces? 

Kalvin and Sammie

It is easier to keep loving the players who got us here. Even when they screw up the worst criticism I can muster is “oh dear” in the tone of a primary school teacher whose favourite pupil has just messed his trousers. It’s harder to learn to love the new fellas, who are playing in a mainly losing (sometimes drawing) team, where there are always mistakes to identify and poor performers to castigate. Not much scope for many of them to have thrilling moments that win a place in your heart.

That said, I’m desperate for Kalvin Phillips to thrive at Ipswich Town and I’m taking any mistakes he makes as a dagger to the heart. I love a redemption arc and listening to him discuss the issues he had at West Ham and City on the My Mates a Footballer podcast I couldn’t help but root for him. He just seems a really lovely guy. There’s also some self-preservation here in that having a dominant elite centre midfielder is essentially a cheat code for Premier League survival – for details see Joao Palhinha/Fulham, Christian Eriksen/Brentford. We rather need Kalvin to be that for us.

I agreed with McKenna that he was excellent in this one (and that the speculation about his commitment to the club was ludicrous). It was his ambitious zipped ball between the lines that found Hirst to set up the first and just generally he looked the dominant midfielder in the game, certainly until the sending off. For me, our best periods this season have come when KP has gone through the gears and started setting the tempo. You just have to hope there’s more and more rust coming off him as the season continues. Wish he could have fouled Keane Lewis-Potter before Brentford’s first goal mind (what a player he was by the way).

If Kalvin Phillips is one where I’m just willing him to hit those heights, Sammie Szmodics is just an enjoyable footballer. Even when he was tormenting us for Peterborough and Blackburn you knew he was just the kind of footballer you would love to have at your club. An irritating shithouse is just what you call iconically abrasive footballers who play for someone else.

For me, of all the new recruits, Sammie feels like the one who most gets the 2022-2024 vibe. Off the ball he charges enthusiastically into the press and seems to already know the patterns off by heart. In attacking situations, he is nerveless, which is a blessed relief given how skittish almost everybody else at the club seems right now. There was a missed one-on-one at 2-0 in this one, but even that through no major fault of Szmodics, who kept his calm, gave the keeper the eyes, but saw his shot just barely clip the keeper’s outstretched leg. The one he took was almost nonchalant, which I suppose you can be once you’ve scored against Ederson at The Etihad. Sammie’s definitely a keeper.

So what I’m saying is that found things to enjoy. Beyond that, I have nothing. I have nothing to say. Baby’s sleeping anyway. Shhhhhh.

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Post-game on Saturday, I started thinking about how our set-up and tactics against Everton affected the game and specifically how the Toffees exploited them, got control of the game and played through us so easily. It ties in with our out of possession game down the left.

The crux of the issue is as follows. When Everton had possession, mainly in their final third, Kalvin Phillips appeared to be tasked with marking/keeping an eye on Dwight McNeil and preventing the ball going into Everton’s number ten.

As McNeil was playing so high, just off Dominic Calvert-Lewin, this meant he was playing very deep, more or less creating a five versus four between our back line and their top line).

This meant that Mr Morsy was slightly higher up and was trying to get close to Idrissa Gana Gueye, but Gueye started dropping deeper and played on a different line to his partner, Abdoulaye Doucouré.

As a result, this left Jack Clarke with the task of trying to cover both Ashley Young and Doucouré, as well as dropping in to help Leif Davis cope with Everton right-winger Jack Harrison at times.

This made it look like the distances amongst our front 6 were too big at times, as we were pulled out of shape by simple movements. This left us chasing shadows, with Everton always having an overload.

Credit to Everton to recognising and exploiting this and thus not always going long, easily building up though the pitch at times. Then, when they got their noses in front (especially after the second goal) they were happy to just sit-in and let us have the ball in front them.

In this image from first couple of minutes, you can see Phillips tracking McNeill across the pitch:

A few minutes later, again Phillips is with McNeil and Mr Morsy has pushed onto Gueye and has left Doucouré with all the space in the Ipswich left midfield area.

Here’s another example twenty minutes in of Phillips going to track McNeil and this allowing Everton easily to play through the pitch with Mr. Morsy high and isolated between Doucouré and Gueye.

I am guessing that there were probably several reasons why we decided to do this, rather than going man for man, when Everton had the ball.

If a team is predominantly going to go ‘long’ from the back anyway, then why look to press them high up when numbers could potentially be used more effectively deeper in the pitch?

Did McKenna have concerns over leaving four versus four at the back, especially with Calvert-Lewin and McNeil against Woolfenden and Burgess?

Was this Plan B or C, with Plan A potentially being to play man-to-man with a central partnership of Dara O’Shea and Jacob Greave… which then had to be re-thunk when Greaves got injured… and then once again, a day before the game, when Johnson got injured?

If there was a late change of plan, did this mean that some players were less comfortable with their roles and there wasn’t enough time to get them drilled?

I believe that had this been seen as someone not doing what they were being asked in the first half, then we would have seen a tactical time out or different instructions given during the half.

To summarise:

Even though it may appear as though someone in the team isn’t doing their job well, hasn’t had a good game, looks out of position or “doesn’t have the legs”, it may be down to the job that they are being asked to do or just a knock-on effect from the team’s tactics or another individual’s job, which then affects theirs.

Also, although we all think that McKenna is a tactical genius, he is now coming up against very experienced coaches … and teams with better, more experienced players.

Moving onto today’s, if the Brentford first team play set-up anything like their U21s did on Thursday night then it’s going to be a fascinating afternoon.

They basically played a back 3/5, but in possession they built up in 2-3-5 in a really fluid formation with lots of rotations.

This included their two wing backs pushed high and wide onto their top line, their right centre back playing in midfield (even at right wing at times), a midfielder dropping into the back line, their number nine dropping really deep and plenty of runners going beyond him.

Then there’s the set-pieces too. Plenty of variations but they did love to play a short routine and look to pull Ipswich out of their set shape, working themselves into better areas for better goal-scoring opportunities.

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As a newly-promoted club I suppose you go into the season with a dream scenario and a nightmare scenario. In the dream your momentum, the buzz of the stadium, your unique style of play and your underrated players surprise your opponents, and you rack up unexpected points so quickly that relegation looks unlikely from the outset. In the nightmare you get smashed every week by everyone you come across and start to look nervously at that Derby County lowest points record.

If very creditable home performances against Fulham and Villa largely took the nightmare scenario off the table, the last two with West Ham and Everton have seen that lovely dream scenario finally float off into the sky (like bubbles, I suppose). At the final whistle yesterday being the fourth worst team in the division, let alone anything better, felt a long way off, particularly as two of the three teams below us likely have a surge into mid-table in them.

Where can I dig out some realistic hope that we aren't just destined for an extended tour of misery and public embarrassment?

The usual way we do this is by imagining different things we could try in order to fix stuff. Fans of struggling teams love to pin their problems on specificities of personnel and system. If we move Omari Hutchinson wide or swap Wes Burns for Chio Ogbene or Jack Clarke for Sammie Szmodics, if we go 3-5-2 or 4-3-3, if we press higher or drop deeper, if we go longer or play more direct, we'll get back on track.

I'm a bit sceptical about any of these potential solutions, which seem to me like a way of bargaining with reality. It's not that I don't think the last two games will have given McKenna any new problems to ponder or that it’s worthwhile for supporters to just close off all discussion by deferring to the manager. “In McKenna we trust”, sure, but we still get to pick the bones out of failures. It’s more just that the underlying problem might be something impervious to messing about with the system. The players on other teams might just be, relative to anything we've faced in decades, really really excellent. Ours, relatively speaking, not (so far).

This really came home to me thinking about how I regarded run-of-the-mill Premier League players before this season. Ask me about Michail Antonio after years watching him on Match of the Day and I'd have said "yeah, decent enough player, but nothing special". Well, trotting out against Ipswich at the London Stadium he went straight into the top five centre forwards I'd ever seen play against us.

Same goes, really, for Everton stalwarts Idrissa Gana Gueye and Abdoulaye Doucouré, not amongst the players you mention with awe before you get here, but more accomplished and athletic (even at 35 in Gueye's case) than pretty much anyone I've ever seen play in midfield for or against us in the two decades before this season. My Evertonian friend Mike highlighted Doucouré in a deeper role as a weakness pre-kick-off, so his composed performance rather exacerbated my sense of Ipswich’s general inferiority.

That’s before you get to the big stars. As a Southampton-supporting friend complained to me recently, “trouble is, every other team in this division has a player who is essentially a nuclear weapon, capable of destroying you at any moment”. On Saturday, Dwight McNeil felt like the one.

There might be marginal gains to be had in swapping some personnel or adjusting our tactics, but it probably won't fundamentally change this equation. We have had individual errors and anonymous performances from both nominal starters and would-be replacements, new recruits and old hands. Clangers dropped by Aro Muric, Axel Tuanzebe, Ben Johnson, Axel Tuanzebe, Jacob Greaves, Leif Davis, Kalvin Phillips, Sam Morsy and Wes Burns, basically anyone who has spent enough time close enough to our penalty area for their mistakes to directly cost us. Some of these have been the price paid for "bravery", for a necessary willingness to take the ball under pressure, but lots of them have simply been malfunctions, the product of players operating at their absolute limits in terms of speed of thought and execution.

Does Dara O'Shea know how to avoid putting his clearing headers back into danger? Of course. Does Wes Burns know how to volley a loose ball out of his own penalty area? Definitely. Can all eleven Ipswich players make those correct decisions instantly 100 times out of 100 whilst playing at near constant maximum physical exertion in a Premier League game? Not so far.

"Individual errors" but a collective problem. It's not restricted to our own penalty area either. We move on quicker from attacking opportunities missed, but the same issue - composure - afflicts our forwards. Can Jack Clarke strike a ball well? Ask Vaclav Hladky. Is he settled enough in a Premier League game to go cold when a good chance presents itself? Not so far. Even before finding the upper tier with our best chance on Saturday, he'd often been hesitant in promising situations - dwelling on the ball or passing when the shot was on, shooting when the pass was more obvious.

Likewise, Omari Hutchinson shows no sign that he's technically or athletically unsuited to the level. He’s hurting the opposition in some parts of the pitch - only Mohammed Kudus, Jeremy Doku and Adama Traore have completed more dribbles in the Premier League. Yet, has he regularly found the pass, shot or cross allowing us to profit from our best player taking opponents out of the game? Not so far.

Where’s this “bright side” you promised then Jack?

I suppose I could fall back on the simple fact that we are not, as yet, in the relegation zone. There are at least three teams that are not currently accelerating away from us. I could also take comfort in recent precedent for teams going this deep into the season without registering a win but nevertheless staying up comfortably. This ain’t over and nothing at all is settled eight games in. That said, I think it’s probably better to address yourself to the present as it actually is. We haven’t set a standard sufficient to give ourselves a fighting chance of staying up, not so far. So what I’m going to have to do is make that “so far” load bearing. There are good reasons to think this team has not peaked and will improve.

Well, I’ve got three anyway.

First of those is McKenna. During his time here he has continually solved problems, often without the need for reinforcement of his playing staff. For instance, the rapid defensive solidity developed almost immediately after his arrival or the way we dug our way out of January ruts in both promotion seasons. His teams (and sometimes his players) have also sometimes taken a few months to properly hit their stride, so it’s not entirely unrealistic to hope his coaching methods are going to elevate collective and individual performances over time.       

Second, we have had a lot of turnover in the Summer, more by a long way than in any other McKenna window. When you are dependent, as we desperately are, on the whole being more than the sum of its parts, that matters more than it usually would. Up to now truly cohesive performances have been rare but the hope is they can become more regular over time. It takes time for partnerships to develop, for connections to form and for patterns of play to get internalised. We probably have more scope than the more established teams to progress here.

Third, if we’re talking composure, composure comes from feeling comfortable. We have a lot of players with good reason to be a bit skittish about the challenge confronting them. There are young players like Greaves, Davis, Hutchinson, Clarke and Delap, for whom these are their first real minutes at this level. Inconsistency in execution and decision-making comes with the territory. Then you have Muric, O’Shea, Ogbene, Phillips and Johnson, all with recent career failures (some group failures, some individual) and all with anxieties about future progress. To them you can add the army of players for whom this is highest point they’ve reached in long EFL careers, who understandably are taking time to adjust. Potentially, some of the individual errors get less common as some of them settle (though not all of them ultimately will), particularly if we can pick up a bloody win sooner rather than later.

For me, the thread that links the three is staying the course. For us and for the team. If the inquests and scapegoating from supporters get too intense, if the belief drops too much, then building that collective buy-in to what we’re doing gets immeasurably harder. if McKenna rips up his plans, starts second-guessing himself too much, chasing new systems, tinkering endlessly with personnel, it becomes less likely that the team develops collectively over time and that cohesive performances become more common. It makes it harder for his coaching to take effect or patterns of play to get ingrained. It delays rather than advances the time when individuals feel settled in these encounters. Tempting as it might be to start ringing the changes, I suspect believing in the players we have and the plans drawn up for them pre-season is the only road to anything good.

The obstacles in front of us might ultimately be more than we can overcome, but sticking together and standing our ground may ultimately be all we have.

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A bit of time to get some perspective and resist some knee jerk judgements on players and systems. Our heavy defeat at West Ham wasn’t completely characteristic of our previous performances, games in which we generally competed well. Indeed, beating us had so far been beyond everyone bar Manchester City and Liverpool. Yes, some of the flaws on display were familiar, but exaggerated by the game suddenly slipping away from us in the minutes before and after half-time. It is a mistake to get too low about this performance and forget the encouragement we took from previous ones.

Yet, it is also too easy to find false comfort in the wake of a heavy defeat in the Premier League. You examine the opposition, you pick out their best players (Jarred Bowen! Mohammed Kudus! Lucas Paquetá!) and you declare that this was never a game you expected to win. You can chuck in some complaints about the view and the quality of the home support for additional comfort if you like. That was, you tell yourself, an established top division side, whose currently humble league position belies the underlying quality of their players.

This kind of bargaining is also probably a mistake. You do have to face things how they are. I didn’t walk into the London Stadium thinking West Ham United away was an unwinnable game where the home side would rip us to shreds, so I can’t rationally write the game off in hindsight. This was a team who had started the season in bad to middling fashion, with a poor fit of a manager who was chased out of Sevilla with pitchforks. There are not enough games against teams lesser than the Irons to talk easily of focusing our efforts elsewhere and I had hoped we’d contend for a win in this one.

You might have taken a good performance and a narrow defeat, but even with result set aside, there was zero comfort to be taken from the game itself. This was a chastening rout that played into many of the concerns I had momentarily parked after the Villa game. We were largely impotent from open play (six shots total, three from range, two in the dying embers long after the game was over), despite some substantial phases of controlled possession in their half. But that was almost by-the-by. I don’t expect us to be battering the opposition’s door down in many away games this season and as our centre forward is currently shooting more efficiently than Erling Haaland (36 per cent of Liam Delap’s shots have been goals to the Norwegian’s frankly rather profligate 28 per cent), for the moment we don’t really need to.

It was at the other end of the pitch that frankly awful things were happening. West Ham had 13 shots on target, apparently the most they’ve ever managed in a Premier League match. Focus inevitably falls on individual errors – Kalvin Phillips’ undercooked pass for the first goal, Ben Johnson’s overcooked pass for the third – but considerable work remained between those giveaways and a good shooting opportunity, whilst goals two and four came against set defences.

There were echoes of our trip to Southampton here, both home teams finding it all too easy to convert possession and territory into big chances. West Ham only really needed to glance at our penalty area and things opened right up for them. Against the Saints the long straight ball was the main problem, against West Ham defending crosses was our kryptonite. Across the whole game, the Hammers only had 11 opportunities to put the ball into the box from wide (relative to our 15) and from them reaped considerable reward – goals 2 and 4, plus another absolute sitter that Kudus helped on to the post in the first half. This extended a recent pattern, in that we also managed to concede one massive opportunity from just four crosses against Aston Villa. Generally speaking, an ordinary defence would expect to concede only once every 45 or so crosses.

We couldn’t defend for long periods, couldn’t profit during the periods we were on top. We conceded a volume of chances you’d be a touch embarrassed to have allowed during a visit to East Manchester, let alone East London. No individual covered themselves in glory, so I’m reluctant to single anyone out, though you can probably imagine from the crossing stat where our most urgent issues might be. This was the first time this season where we looked like a team that might finish twentieth. 

Deep breath though. We have been here before relatively recently. We got to half time at Elland Road last season having been smashed to pieces. Our star player had given away a penalty and an own goal, Leeds had looked like scoring every time they came forward. If the home side hadn’t taken their foot off the gas after scoring a fourth early in the second half, the score really could have been anything at all. Going the other way our attackers had left no dent on the Whites’ apparently impenetrable back line (thankfully QPR found it far more porous). It felt utterly delusional in that moment to believe we could compete with Leeds over the rest of that season. The days when you get it wrong, where even your best players are a three out of ten (you’ll bounce back Kalv, Leif did!), where you make every possible error and get punished, they don’t determine everything.

Some games accelerate away from you, going from even to evisceration in a less than 10 minutes of football, perhaps more regularly when your manager is set on a relatively high-risk style of play. You wonder if our aggressive out-of-possession structure (documented very interestingly here) is a bit of a high wire act. One wrong move, one lapse in concentration and things go wrong real quick. Our worst moments this season have tended to come in the form of brief blasts rather than across entire games.

If we are going to progress to the point where we can stay in this division, it probably is not going to be linear progress. It could well be than any longer term uptick is still sprinkled with intermittent absolute kickings. Aston Villa some weeks and West Ham in others (not too often I hope, it was all rather unpleasant). It is which kind of performance is closest to par that matters most.

At times we have solved some of the challenges West Ham posed. At Brighton we did show that we could defend our penalty box against quality wingers for long periods (my absolute best wishes to thus far Player of the Season Axel Tuanzebe, by the way, get well soon and please sign a new contract). Against Villa and Fulham we did show we could maintain a high line without getting picked off too regularly on the break. At times in those two games the likes of Davis, Clarke, Hutchinson and Delap also demonstrated they could stretch Premier League defences. Over time you have to trust we will put more of those pieces together in the same 90 minutes.

Last Saturday probably wiped away what remained of any 2022-24 momentum (not that many of our current starters were around to absorb it anyway), but hope still abounds. We have been better previously than the East London debacle and will be better in future. Under McKenna you have to believe there’s a longer-term plan to get us where we need to be, even after a largely irredeemable afternoon. It will require a bit of patience and a bit of faith.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Liam Delap per 90 so far this season

Goals 0.66

xG 0.19

xGOT 0.47

Shots 1.83

Shots on target 1.16

Assists 0.0

Expected Assists 0.01

Successful passes 4.98

Pass accuracy 54.5%

Chances created 0.83

Successful dribbles 0.83

Dribble success 50%

Touches 24.6

Touches in opposition box 3.32

Dispossessed 1.99

Fouls won 1.83

Tackles 0.17

Tackles won 33%

Duels won 4.15 (37.3%)

Interceptions 0.17

Blocks 0.33

Fouls 2.32

Recoveries 2.66

Possession won attacking third 0.66

Ipswich defending set plays and clearing corners

A majority of teams (including Ipswich) are now more comfortable in defending set-plays in central areas. This is largely due to teams using several zonal defenders to protect the perceived most dangerous areas of the penalty box.

Teams position their best headers of a ball in areas with the highest opposition chance of scoring. Ipswich centre back Jacob Greaves appears to be a ‘magnet to the ball’ when he clears a lot of corners, but in reality he’s being positioned where the ball is most likely to be delivered, that is, in the most dangerous part of the penalty area.

This then means that you potentially allow an aerial advantage or a numerical advantage to the opposition in other parts of the penalty area, but they are still going to have to get the ball past those big zonal guys plus the keeper, to score.

The hybrid zonal and man-marking system that Ipswich (and the majority of other teams) use, means that the perceived ‘least’ aerially effective players are placed in the least dangerous zones (near post, covering the short corner, edge of area, etc.) and not asked to man mark.

Previously for Ipswich, three of these players were commonly Mr. Morsy, Conor Chaplin and Nathan Broadhead but against Brighton it started off as Mr. Morsy, Omari Hutchinson and Sammie Szmodics.

As we have also seen over the last few years, teams increasingly identify defensive set-pieces as a potential time to counter-attack, as attacking teams commit bodies into forward areas and, as is fairly obvious, leave more space at the back to exploit. We also know that this is an area Ipswich have tried to gain an advantage, with the goal away at Derby (18 months ago) being possibly the most striking example.

This was our hybrid set up for that corner, which is similar to how we still set up today (varying slightly according to how the opposition are organised). The result of that corner was a catch by goalkeeper Christian Walton – a throw out wide to Broadhead – a cross field pass to Burns – a header back across to Chaplin. I believe this is a practised ‘zig-zag’ counter attack where the ball is switched against where the defenders are focused and example of ‘pushing against the flow’ of the opposition.

Moving onto the Brighton game. Brighton had a total of 9 corners (2 from their right wing and 7 from the left wing) and they had good variety:

• 2 outswingers

• 5 inswingers

• 2 short corners

They also varied the delivery with near, central and back post options.

Thus Ipswich slightly adjusted their set-up to reflect what Brighton were doing, with a couple more examples in the stills above (check out Mr. Morsy’s ‘open’ body shape so that he has more chance of seeing players coming from all directions in the second image).

With regard to how Ipswich cleared those corners:

• 3 were cleared into central areas, but 2 went to Brighton players and one, luckily, went to Hutchinson (a header by Greaves that mostly went up in the air, rather than away) who mis-controlled it and gave away possession (more on that 2nd phase later).

• Muric caught one and punched one away.

• Two went straight through the box, coming out the other side.

• One landed at Davis’ feet who picked a pass to Hutchinson but the counter attack came to nothing near the half way line.

• Brighton messed up one short corner routine (more on that later too).

Players are coached in the first instance to clear the ball in the most efficient way at set pieces. For example, you do not want to clear it straight to an opponent who is then going to have an opportunity to get a clear effort on goal (as with one Burns header back across goal). It is also better to clear it into area that it is going to be contested quickly by your own team-mates, rather than allowing an opponent time and space to re-cycle the ball back into a dangerous area.

This leads onto the 2nd phase situations, which teams are now looking to exploit. Brentford and Arsenal work particularly hard on these, with excellent results. I believe that the 2nd phase is seen as an area to exploit as this is when the defensive team are less likely to be in their pre-planned, set-piece shape. Players begin to think about if and when they should go back into their base shape (or “rest defence”). For example, when does Davis decide to move back out into the left back position? Players on the defending team also have to decide whether to close the ball down or stay in their zonal and man-marking positions. As such, it becomes more of a ‘chaos’ situation, rather than controlled, with forwards left unmarked and poor defensive lines (think of the recent Man Utd goal at Southampton).  

The best option for avoiding these second phase attacks is to try and direct “clearances” towards a teammate, if you have the time, space and awareness to be able to pick them out, especially if this can lead to a counter attacking opportunity. This is rather than trying to clear to central areas ‘at all costs’, with teams now being more ‘comfortable’ in defending central areas.  

Our two best chances from the Brighton game both resulted from defensive corners. On one occasion Liam Delap hit the post after a long direct run from Ipswich’s penalty area. This came from a second phase play. A poor Brighton cross was followed by a relatively easy, unchallenged, headed clearance from Tuanzebe, sent forward and towards Delap, who was on his way back to his rest defence position but had turned back when the 2nd phase cross came in.

Finally, the Hutchinson counter attacking chance came from a poorly executed short corner routine, where the Brighton player let the ball roll under his foot, with  Hutchinson able to pick it up as he was on his way out to close him down (as was his zonal role at that corner).

George Hirst versus Liam Delap in the Ipswich press (Brighton)

One other nugget from Kieran McKenna in his post-match presser for Brighton:

‘George Hirst’s out-of-possession performance was excellent. We had some problems in the first half, we had to adjust the role of the striker in the second half and press with more of a 4-2-3-1 and George’s out-of-possession game, his understanding is so good by now and he knows exactly what the team needs in certain moments.’

So, what was the problem in the first half and what did we do differently after the break?

In the first half, we appeared to press in a 4-2-4 but not aggressively or man-for-man. It was Delap’s job to pick-up the Brighton defensive midfielder Carlos Baleba, whilst our Left 10 (Szmodics) worked on their centre backs.

This meant that Brighton could easily work their way up the pitch by having an overload in their back line (especially with Verbruggen joining in and Baleba working in the ‘shadow’ of his marker) and moving the ball across the pitch, waiting for the opening to move into the next phase.  

The change in the second half saw Hutchinson move onto covering Baleba, Szmodics (then Clarke) was moved onto the full back and Burns (then Ogbene) the left back, leaving Delap to cover the two centre backs.

Once Hirst came on for the Delap, we then saw his pressing work better by funnelling Brighton into their left back corner, where they struggled to get out so easily, enabling Ipswich to force errors and turnovers.

The final two stills shows how Brighton tried to overcome this, by Baleba dragging his man (Hutchinson) out of the middle of the pitch, with his midfield partner (Ayari, also working in the ‘shadows’) then dropping into that space to link the play and move them up the pitch.

Do I know now? Probably not like I knew in 2000. I'm different, you never believe anything with the same conviction you do as a young man. The Premier League is different. Aston Villa in 2024 aren't turn of the century Manchester United. Youri Tielemans and Amadou Onana are impressive young footballers to best in midfield battle, but rolling over prime Keane and Scholes was something else.

I'm more convinced though.

Our previous matches all had something in them that left me wondering. At this point you have got to have a deep faith and trust in the people running Ipswich Town, but the part of my brain that asks "how would I read this as an outsider" could definitely see a few red flags. Teams that can't turn territory and possession into chances (as we didn't against Fulham) go down. Teams that don't threaten when they get good counter-attacking opportunities and need to defend perfectly to get anything from a game (us at Brighton) are relegation-coded. Teams that look vulnerable defensively against their direct rivals (like Southampton) smell of the drop.

I won't say you can quite throw all those worries in the bin, but Saturday assuaged most of my concerns. Not to gild the lily with Villa, but over the past couple of seasons they've muscled their way into the pack of teams you expect to lose to as a bottom half team. In Youri Tielemans and Amadou Onana they have the guts of the midfield for (officially) the sixth-best international team in the world. Tielemans in particular looked obscenely technical at times. In attack Ollie Watkins, Jacob Ramsey and Morgan Rogers are all in the basic nightmare category - big, strong, fast and with a velvet first touch.

There are ways you take points off this kind of outfit, especially at home, that don't really mean much. You take your chances, you get ahead in the game, you minimize mistakes, you defend your box well, your keeper makes a few big saves, their forwards are profligate. Achievements composed of superficial moments not the general flow of things. Leicester City's manager and players got very excited about their narrow loss to Arsenal but you're as well praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster as hoping your keeper makes 12 saves in a game on a regular basis.

This was not that. If anything the reverse was true. Villa got one gift, a shanked Jacob Greaves clearance which Morgan Rogers stopped dead imperiously, before exchanging passes with Watkins and firing through the only postage stamp of air amongst six attempted blocks. They made one big chance. Leon Bailey slung in a cross from an unpromising situation, of the kind which nine times out of ten comes to nothing. The speed and trajectory were perfect for evading Dara O'Shea and tantalizingly out of Aro Muric's catching range. Watkins finished with little fuss. There was nothing else of note from the visitors, not even a barrage of long shots, crosses and corners.
 

Conceding twice from three shots faced is usually “good night, lights out” for a promoted team against an established top-eight Premier League team. Having to pro-actively go out and find ways to control the game and to hurt the opposition (all whilst keeping a lid on counter-attacks) is ordinarily too much.

Not today though. It felt like there was tangible threat from almost all over the pitch, from new characters and old protagonists. Jack Clarke, socks down, hair slicked back and shorts billowing, formed a lovely bond with Leif Davis, who no doubt appreciated his former Leeds team-mates' intelligent movement and willingness to work his way out of tight spaces. Clarke was a route up field that Villa couldn't afford to leave one-on-one. Davis himself continues to ramp up his attacking contributions. The passing is getting more confident and more ambitious as he settles at the level. One through ball for Liam Delap was sumptuous.

Speaking of Delap, Liam probably doubled his transfer value over the 90 minutes. It's coarse to speak of such things though, better to just sit back and enjoy our big, burly, boisterous bruiser of centre forward bulldozing his way past opponents. I have no idea how you deal with a charging rhino doing a 60mph stepover and neither did poor Diego Carlos. At first I was somewhat resistant to Liam's charms, yearning for George Hirst's more controlled physicality. Now I have to admit the pulse rather races whenever Liam’s juggernaut goes through the gears.

Delap benefited from two bits of service that were just that crucial smidgen sharper than in previous matches. Compared to a few weeks ago, options were chosen quicker and more decisively. For our first, Kalvin Phillips settled on a second ball, then scooped it in behind Ezri Konsa for Clarke to execute "the cutback" (TM). Delap took the Conor Chaplin role, shooting early and shooting hard.

Build up for goal one was the new boys, goal two, some older connections. A turnover by Jack Taylor, who clearly felt the Championship was an inadequate setting for his skill set and now feels much more at home in the Premier League.

His pass between the lines found Omari Hutchinson. Omari who at times this season has looked a bit annoyed that he can't do everything himself at this level. He ended last season as a one-man wrecking ball, leaving a trail of crying full backs and twisted ankles in his wake. At this level, he's adapting to a new role, less of a goal threat and more an "enganche”, a connecting hook between midfield and attack. He seems to be picking the ball up deeper, meaning when he evades a tackle and breaks into space, the premium option is more often the boring, simple pass to keep the move going, rather than the flashier stuff.

Against Villa Hutchinson was finding pockets, picking astute passes and maintaining tempo. It was lower key but it was as effective as I've seen him this season. The pass to Delap - quick, decisive, precise, straightforward - was a case in point.

After 2-2 Ipswich kept pushing. Tuanzebe's header from a Davis’ cross was just about cleared by Lucas Digne. Hutchinson flashed over from 25 yards. Pau Torres scrambled back in the nick of time to block Wes Burns shot from just East of the penalty spot. As stoppage time arrived the Blues were the likelier winners with further half chances for Jack Taylor and Dara O'Shea.

By the end we were all having too much fun to welcome the final whistle, despite the unexpected point in our pocket and the stress of pushing so many players forward in search of a winner. The pace of the Premier League is such that everything feels so vertiginous, like any moment you might suddenly plummet. Yet you willed us to have a bit more time to complete our latest high wire act.

It was a performance where strengths revealed themselves. A defence with sufficient pace and organisation to hold up in a game we chased for an hour against one of Europe’s best teams (they’re beating Bayern München as I write this). In Phillips and Morsy we have an atomic pair in midfield that looks fully capable of imposing itself on other teams. Our attacking options increasingly have not just the individual skills to hurt opposition defences, but now also the patterns of play and shrewd decision-making that really brings that consistent attacking threat.

You walked away thinking, without any sense of an insider’s delusion, “if we play like this at Portman Road every week, we’ll win a lot of games”. I might not “know” for certain like I did in 2000. I’m too old not to chuck in all those doubts that experience brings. Some performances are outliers, illustrative of your ceiling not your median. Some opponents, for all their qualities, make for a good matchup, your strengths match their flaws for some reason. There are caveats but not fear any more. Competing in this league is not beyond us.  

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Jack Clarke v. Aston Villa

Minutes 89

Assists 1

Shots 2

Accurate passes 20/27 (74%)

Chances created 3

xG 0.14

xA 0.13

Big chances missed 1

Blocked shots 1

Touches 44

Touches in the opposition box 5

Successful dribbles 3/4 (75%)

Passes into final third 2

Accurate crosses 0/2

Accurate long balls 0/4

Offsides 2

Dispossessed 1

Tackles won 2/3 (66%)

Clearances 1

Defensive actions 4

Recoveries 3

Ground duels won 6/8 (75%)