Bare Bones
Getting the most out of the understudies
If I was asked to pick just one image that encapsulated the English Football League's transfer window it would be Harry Redknapp addressing journalists from his car, louchely propping his elbow on the window frame. You see that image and you can practically hear the cliches tumble out, "we're down to the bare bones, Jim, we need at least 3 or 4 bodies through the door". Sometimes Harry seemed to love transfers more than the actual business of managing a football team and the window was always a time for a bit of hard-nosed lobbying. Get in the media, tell them how short you are, stick that academy kid on the bench, let them know how desperate things have got. The "bare bones" routine was his specialty. Like clockwork, an unmanageable injury crisis every January necessitated loosened purse strings and shiny new acquisitions. You do wonder what his players must have made of it, even if Redknapp had that raconteur’s charm to buy him a bit of leeway.
Most managers have their signature way of dealing with squad shortcomings. When the players available weren't to his liking, Mick McCarthy's reflex was to go ever more ultra-defensive, like an armadillo beset by coyotes. Paul Lambert seemed to just throw his hands up during his reign's many injury crises. With a shrug of the shoulders, his whole demeanour asked “what could you possibly expect me to do here?” In his shorter stint, Paul Cook's first and only instinct seemed to be a combination of slagging his squad off in the media and marching up to Mark Ashton's office to demand ever more players.
Kieran McKenna, meanwhile, is cut from a very different cloth. The last two holiday seasons have been trying for Ipswich Town. Last year we had illness and injury force us to put out patched up teams on trips to Portsmouth and Lincoln, both producing unwelcome stalemates. This year, another bug and a spate of absentees for QPR and Stoke, with more automatic-promotion-killing draws.
McKenna is definitively not a "bare bones" guy. After the Portsmouth draw last season, he went out of his way to praise the group as a whole: “The mentality of the players and the spirit and the togetherness, I can feel it behind me on the subs’ bench and those who weren’t on the bench were very vocal, supporting the players.” Even in his remarks post-Lincoln, with the window open and an under-strength team out, there were few complaints.
In public, there's a calm, don't-panic approach to both injury and squad depth problems that consistently pays dividends. Spin back to August and Christian Walton's injury. Outside Playford Road there was not a lot of enthusiasm at the prospect of Vaclav Hladky lining up against Championship forwards. Whilst Vas' reputation had somewhat recovered from his ignominious start to Ipswich life, the general consensus amongst fans was that Hladky was adequate backup for League One, but an upgrade would be required for the sterner tests ahead. It would've been easy to start agitating for reinforcements.
Yet before the game, all we got from McKenna was faith in his player. “Any team would miss Christian’s qualities that he brings, but Vas has been terrific for us on and off the pitch in the 18 months I’ve been here… I thought he was terrific in pretty much every game he played last season, in the FA Cup and the Carabao – he didn’t have a lot to do, but also in the Papa Johns as well… He’s got his own qualities and his own strengths that he brings to his team and showed them last season, he shows them every day in training and he’s an important member of the group.”
Faith in his player but also, I think, faith that the collective work his group does matters more than the specific individuals he has at his disposal. Hladky was going to be alright not just because of his now obvious quality as a ball player and shot stopper, but also because we'd make the system work for him and hide his deficiencies. We knew Hladky wasn't a massive guy who would claim crosses in amongst brawny opposition centre backs, so we set up to have the imperious Cameron Burgess take more control on set pieces and crosses. Thus far we’ve been richly rewarded for the trust invested.
For a lot of managers our recent spate of injuries and dropped points would have been a prompt to go at least a little bit Redknapp-through-a-car-window. The team we put out at QPR featured just four of our regular outfield players. At Stoke, half the backline were out of their favoured position, two attackers had been vomiting their guts up three days prior and Kayden Jackson was making his first start as centre forward since our home game with Leeds United in August.
It would have been easy to feel sorry for ourselves and understandable if McKenna had started stamping his feet for a striker right this minute. Yet, after Stoke it was all praise for the stand-ins. “We have a squad, I thought the players who came into the team did ever so well. In today’s instance, I thought George [Edmundson] was a credit to himself at centre-half, more so for how he’s trained in the last couple of months when he’s been waiting for his opportunities and supporting his teammates and keeping himself ready… Axel [Tuanzebe] did really well coming into the team in a different role than he has played with us in his early time at the club.”
In advance of Sunderland it was the same mantra, with a little prod towards the more impatient end of the fanbase. “What we'd love to see tomorrow is Portman Road at its best in full support vocally of the players on the pitch and the players on the pitch giving absolutely everything they can to represent the club well and to do so in our brave style and I think if we get that then I'll be happy with what comes from the game.” The message was clear - no-one is coming for the moment, these are my guys and I believe in them, so you should too.
Partially this approach might be a product of the club’s more modern division of labour. McCarthy and Lambert had to pitch up in Marcus Evans’ office to plead (usually unsuccessfully) for reinforcements. These days, recruitment is more of a collective endeavour, with the manager left to focus, as Ted Lasso might put it, “on helping these young fellas become the best version of themselves”. Whilst McKenna's zen-like calm about our squad players might not always get him what he wants in terms of loosened purse strings (it is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease after all), it almost certainly helps us to keep going through tough patches.
The upside of believing in our lesser lights was plain to see in Kayden Jackson's tireless performance against Sunderland. Jackson played like a guy who knows his manager rates him, even if there's a section of supporters who will always see him as a non-league footballer who won a competition, never giving him credit for anything. Cajoling supporters to bear with him pre-match (with some success, in my view) can’t have done any harm. As with Hladky, McKenna has had two full seasons to work with Jackson, he knows his qualities and flaws inside out, he can structure our play around what he can do (press like a maniac, stretch defenses with runs in behind and out wide) and what he can't (win aerial duels and consistently hold the ball up). Thus far his management of Jackson has earned us a very respectable three goals and one assist in 600 minutes, from a player far too readily written off. For context, as an impact sub he’s matched or out-scored all but three of Sunderland’s regular starters, plus nearly half of the Championship strikers signed for seven-figure fees this season.
It is not that the understudies will always get us over the line in tough games. But McKenna’s willingness to focus on what he has rather than what he wants makes sure we’re competitive, even when lesser resources leave us short on numbers and quality as the nights draw in and the hamstrings go twang. A patched up eleven requires the stand-ins to produce something near the top-end of their performance range. We got that from Kayden yesterday because of McKenna’s ability to persuade both him and us to believe. Our reward, a key contribution to a massive win that may tide us over until the cavalry arrives, secured without five key performers.
Kayden Jackson v Sunderland
Minutes 68
Goals 1
Shots 3
Passes 4/6 (67%)
xG 0.49
xGOT 0.87
Shot accuracy 1/3
Touches 10
Touches in opposition box 3
Passes into final third 1
Long balls 1/1
Tackles won 1/1
Defensive actions 3
Recoveries 1
Ground duels won 1/3
Aerial duels won 0/1
Fouls 2
Too right. Sport is a team effort and a good team is always one which is greater than the sum of its parts.
You nailed it again Jack. Calm heads is what gets a team through a rough patch.