Little Things

Trying to find some pleasure in an unpleasant run of results

Of late, I have found myself insistent on the subject of Premier League wins. I am most vocal on the subject of the Premier League wins. “Where are the Premier League wins? “When are you going to get the Premier League wins?” “Why aren’t you getting the Premier Leagues wins now?” And so on. So please, the Premier League wins.

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.

KP applauding

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.