For Southampton 2011/12, read Ipswich town 2023/24.
Promoted from League 1, making a great start in the Championship and
maintaining it, remaining more or less in the top two for the entire season. I
remember thinking that Ipswich might fall away after Christmas and after they
got through that period I remember thinking, well if they’re still there in
April, then maybe… and here they are in April, seven games to go and top of the
league. Throughout our long unbeaten run, they were the team we were aiming at
because they were in second place and we caught up about 12 points on them in
this period but after we went second for one weekend, along came our three
defeats in four and Ipswich won six games in a row. Every time they have been
asked a question this season about their potential longevity, they have
answered it. Usually, I like to take a
pop at the opposition team whenever we come round to play them but I have
absolutely nothing that I can throw at Ipswich and their excellent young
manager Kieran McKenna.
I hate to say this but the most dangerous player is of course ex-Skate Conor
Chaplin who plays just behind the front man. The strength of the team are
definitely in the attacking third with Kieffer Moore and Omari Hutchison also
being major threats. Elsewhere Sam Morsy is a candidate for anyone’s team of
the season in the middle of the park, as it is Leif Davis at left back. Ipswich
have had a decent level of performance more or less all season and also have
that priceless ability to get over the line in tight games. You only have to
look back to go Friday for a comparison where Ipswich huffed and puffed but
managed to beat Blackburn away from home and by contrast, Saints did what they
did and threw two points in the bin.
If there is any positive to take from Good Friday, then it is the fact that it
concentrates the mind so any thoughts that a point might be good enough for us
Ipswich can now firmly be put away. If we have any aspirations of automatic
promotion, then we have to win this. We are perfectly capable of winning this
if everyone plays to their potential and then maybe, Ipswich feel a little bit
of pressure from being up there to be shot at at the top of the league with a
great prize very firmly in their sights and almost within touching distance. Basically, we need them to shit the bed.
Needless to say, we have to take our chances and there will be chances today
because Ipswich are a very open team. It has all the makings of a classic on
paper. I would be amazed if we keep a clean sheet, bearing in mind we haven’t
kept a clean sheet since Russell Martin decided to divert from the tried and
tested back four that kept so many clean sheets during the unbeaten run.
Oddly, it appears that the players and structure that was so successful, will
not play together again after Russell used the defeat against Bristol City
(which was down to Flynn Downes being missing and not using Shea Charles) to
forever reinstall Jack Stephens into the team. It’s not that there’s anything
wrong with Jack Stephens as a player because he did pretty well against
Middlesbrough, but it’s all about combinations. Even if you think someone is
your best player, if he's not part of the best combination, then you leave him out. We do it in other areas of the pitch.
For example, I would say that Joe Aribo is one of our three best
midfield players and if it was purely down to ability would be in the side of
head of Will Smallbone, but the midfield combination of Downes, Smallbone and
Stuart Armstrong works the best, so Joe more or less always find himself on the
bench.
Not today though as he’s in from the start, as is Ryan Fraser on the wing. Che Adams keeps his place and hang on a
minute… KWP is not playing… what the fuck?
In his place is James Bree with he other three defenders being THB,
Bednarek and of course, Captain Jack.
Saints start a game and confident fashion and begin knocking the ball around.
The Jack Stephens thing for today is for him to play at left back and to float
into midfield to pick up the ball off the two centre backs and get the team
moving up the field and it starts off working well and Flynn Downes drags a shot
well wide from the edge of the box. Ten
minutes in and THB coughs up possession on the halfway line and away go Ipswich
down our left and Jackson’s cross is half cleared by Bree to Morsy and we stand
and watch with no one closing him down and allowing him to float one out to
Davis on the left hand side, one touch and he absolutely thunders it over
Bazunu’s somewhat strange low dive at the near post. Great strike and the first
time it’s of course the first time Ipswich have got anywhere near our goal.
Straight from the kick-off and straight up the other end and Adams finds Aribo
and his lovely first time pass on to Adam Armstrong is returned to him and he
squirts across the penalty area to Adams in front of a keeper to knock it on
the net for 1-1. They are appealing for offside but it isn’t, because Leif Davis can;t defend and Che, after his
Middlesbrough disaster, has an equaliser.
Great goal that.
It is time to open the Russell Martin playbook with Bazunu finding Bednarek,
who puts Stuart Armstrong away on the left and he bursts past Jackson before
threading a lovely ball between the centre back and Davis, who has been caught
out again and Adam Armstrong doesn’t need to break stride and first time past the
keeper. Fucking brilliant goal and it’s now beginning to look a little bit like
men against boys.
Ipswich do not have an answer to us and Stuart Armstrong in particular as he
bursts through midfield again leaving Ipswich players trailing in his week
before feeding the ball to Fraser who from virtually the corner of the 6 yard
box, screws it past the keeper but past the far post by about a foot. Fucking
hell that was close but it really should’ve gone in.
Half-time and as I said, it’s men against boys and we really should be more
than the one goal in front having recovered brilliantly from the going behind. The key to the second half is going to be
maintaining the attacking threat throughout the game and it will be nice if
maybe the referee Michael Shite Salisbury started actually penalising Ipswich
for trashing through the back of players. Sam Morsy is still on the pitch and
that’s a little bit of a mystery. He got booked for blatantly hacking down Downes
as he went past him and has already produced a couple more questionable fouls
since then.
It’s even more of a mystery at the start of the second half as he gets in a
clash with Downes in midfield and then performs some sort of wrestling throw on
Downes with the Saints player copping an arm in the face. Michael Shite Salisbury
obviously believes that it is MMA rules today and the Ipswich enforcer gets
away with it again.
We do win a free kick for a Jackson foul on Fraser on the left and when the
ball is whipped in by Bree, Bednarek gets a head to it and deflects it
goalwards but the keeper takes off well to save. One more goal will do this as
long as we keep the pressure on as Ipswich are struggling against us at the
moment.
This is surely it as Downes get away in midfield and it’s a 3v2 break. The pass really needs to go right to Adam
Armstrong but instead he delays and it goes left to Fraser who manages to chip
it over the keeper but hits a defender and bounces out for a corner. Fuck sake.
Kieran McKenna has clearly had enough as the game is only going one way and
makes a triple change and after that it looks like we’re gonna be forced to
make one as Bednarek goes down but after a couple of minutes of treatment he’s
back up again. Suddenly we’re not looking particularly great as there seems to
have been a collective drop in energy, either caused by Ipswich bringing on
fresh legs or us just getting tired.
We get a big warning as an uncharacteristic long bomb forward by Baz is headed
back and Hutchison finds Al Hamadi about 20 yards out and he turns past THB and
Bednarek and slips as he shoots, and the ball goes past Baz and pings off the
post out. Bit of a warning from absolutely nowhere but the tide seems to be
turning.
Soon after, Chaplin switches the ball out wide left to Davis, who muscles Bree
out of the way before he lays it back and it’s fed into Broadhead on the edge
of the box and he scuffs it first time, past THB and Baz dives after it’s gone
into virtually the middle of the goal. For fuck‘s sake. Fucking ridiculous and
appalling to concede so fucking easily.
Russell Martin belatedly reacts to us going conceding and Brooks comes on for
Fraser and a few minutes later, it’s Edozie on for Adams meaning that with Adam
Armstrong going into the middle, we now have a very lightweight front three.
Stephens causes chaos by arriving on the edge of the Ipswich box with the ball
and via Brooks and Aribo, he continues his run and pulls it back to Adam
Armstrong, whose effort is blocked initially and the second effort is straight into
he keeper.
A draw is no good to us and another couple of changes as we head towards 90
with Aribo and Stuart Armstrong being replaced with Smallbone and Rothwell. 90
minutes are up and Ipswich play out quite comfortably with no pressure on the
ball Morsy plays a ball over the top towards Davis, who completely catches out
James Bree and Davis is in behind him. Bree puts a hand on his shoulder, down
goes Davis with multiple rolls and Michael Shite Salisbury can’t get the red
card out quick enough. No one complains too much however when really we should
be surrounding the referee telling him that THB was covering.
THB Politely Enquires If He Was Covering
We survive the free kick and Chaplin is replaced by Sarmiento. Seven minutes almost up and Baz has the ball but he boots at long straight through to the Ipswich keeper. Again they play it through to Morsy and no one closes him and surprise, surprise, he picks out Leif Davis on the left and with no right back anywhere near, he crosses and Sarmiento falls over and despite having four players around him, he gets up and pokes a shot past another half arsed dive by Baz. I’m not as annoyed as with the second goal – this is almost funny.
Barely time to kick off and there you have it, as predictable as night following fucking day, as predictable as a hangover after going out on the piss all day. As predictable as the Middlesbrough equaliser on Friday.
Basically, the story of the game is that we were the better side by a fucking mile for the first hour and then we had 10 minutes where we stepped off the gas a little bit and allowed Ipswich the five minutes of pressure they needed, which they scored from. Even though the last 20 minutes was even-ish, it just had a complete feeling of inevitability that Ipswich were gonna get the goal and so it proved, 97 minutes after a bit of a contentious red card for Bree and no one really covering right back after he was sent off.
The first half and particular was excellent with the rotating of positions working perfectly but players started to get tired around hour mark and we didn’t do anything about it. Stuart Armstrong having played 90 minutes on Friday, was never gonna last more than an hour today but we left him on for too long and that, along with not changing things up when the game changed, surrendered the initiative to Ipswich and that’s why they won the game with the changes that they made with two of their substitutes scoring the second and third goals.
The referee was Michael Shite Salisbury, well known for having an unusual middle name, though I don’t have too much of a problem with the red card for James Bree, who pulled Davis back with no attempt to play the ball. It is arguable whether anyone could’ve got across the cover because THB was there but that part is a 50-50 job. Some refs would’ve sent him off, some wouldn’t. It’s certainly not a howler of a decision but it is a harsh one. So, whilst I don’t have too much of a problem with the red card, I do have a massive problem with the amount of times he let Ipswich players steam through the back of ours without doing anything about it as Wolfenden, Taylor and particularly Morsy, were allowed to get away with murder. The tackle from behind was outlawed 25 years ago but Michael Shite Salisbury didn’t apply the laws. Morsy in particular seem to have some sort of cloak of invisibility around him as he clattered through people at will.
Salisbury was letter of the law on the James Bree challenge but he certainly wasn’t letter of the law with the tackle from behind assaults by Morsy, Taylor and Wolfenden. All three of those could’ve been red cards but he decided to be lenient. Not so lenient with James Bree though was he. Absolute fucking clown. However, it’s not his fault that we played the last half hour like we did.
Though he had a mare against Middlesbrough, it was right to leave Che Adams in the team and he rewarded the selection with a goal and was playing well and didn’t need to be substituted but it seems to be predetermined that he is going to go off and when he went off we lost the ball sticking up front and lost the combative edge that he provides. Brooks, Armstrong and Edozie is as lightweight a front three can possibly be, bearing in mind Ipswich were not shy of sticking in a foot in for the entire game.
Russell Martin’s selection at the start of the game was vindicated with the first half performance but ultimately we’ve gone on to lose so he’s going to get absolutely pelted for it. It’s another three goals conceded without our first-choice defence on the pitch, who were all available. Jack Stephens again played pretty well but it’s not about individual performances, it’s about the defence playing at the unit. Whilst Russell won the first half, Kieran McKenna comprehensively outmanaged him in the second half, using his resources to the maximum effect and that is why we lost the game from a position of strength. Individual mistakes can be blamed of course but our performance fell apart and Ipswich didn’t even have to get much better to capitalise.
The gamble of the KWP decision was ultimately proven to be mental. I assume Bree was picked because of the threat of Davis on the left, and Morsy floating the ball over to him. I assume that the thinking was that Bree is better in the air than KWP. If this reasoning is correct, then it didn’t work very well. Three mistakes by Bree on the first goal – missed tackle, poor clearance and losing his man as the ball was floated over to him. Muscled off the ball for the second goal and losing his man from another floated ball and getting sent off. Because we’d made 3 sets of subs already, we couldn’t bring on KWP and then we lost, the goal again coming down that side. Sometimes you can over think things. You have the best right back in the division, or you have a very average squad player. I know who I’d trust with the assignment. At least Bree’s suspension means one less opportunity to do something else mad.
Overall this game was shockingly managed in the second half as we surrendered the initiative and ultimately threw three points in the bin. We should’ve won, make no mistake about that because we were so much better than them in the first hour but again, we didn’t have the lead that our domination should’ve given us and it seems that teams only need to get a shot on target against us and it’s a goal.
The three goals today were all questionable and you can’t let in three goals like that without looking at the goalkeeper. Near post, middle of the goal and a dribbler into the corner. He may be great with his feet but when it comes to basic shot stopping, he is still piss poor, in fact he's bottom of the entire division for save percentage. That takes some doing when your team is fourth in the table. Maybe it's a question of his balance being in the wrong place but when he dives towards the corner, he never seems to actually go anywhere and just stays in the same place. Russell seems to be more concerned with the third goal when he kicked the ball to their keeper, rather than looking at the fact that he failed to keep the ball out of the net.
That is automatic promotion absolutely gone for the season so all we can do now is try and keep the levels of performance up over the remaining games and try and go into the playoffs in some kind of form.
The new of Jason Wilcox resigning (probably), which leaked out during the game is an unwelcome distraction but I would suggest that the club knew that that was going to happen for quite a while. Wilcox himself has been very quiet so I would suggest this has been inevitable since United paid their client journalists to sound him out. It is however typical Manchester United, Fabrizio Romano et al, to put this out during the most important game of the season. It’s a scummy business, it really is. I have no real gripe with him going to the United car-crash, no doubt for a shitload of money and some jiffy bags full of sweets from Dave Brailsford but a with all the players who left us a few years ago - there are ways of doing it. Wilcox seemed a principled kind of guy but in football, all principles can be bought for the right money.
Have No Fear, Wilcox Replacement Is Already Here
Next up is an away trip to Ewood Park and Blackburn Rovers. It’s still matters of course but it matters a lot less than it would’ve done if we got six points from the last two games, instead of one. We should have got six points of course but a combination of lack of killer instinct and bad game management by players and manager have cost us. We were the better side for all bar five minutes of the Middlesbrough game and for a vast majority of the Ipswich game but we’ve come away with one point instead of six. The worrying thing for me is that The pressure has been on more in these last two games than at any point of the season and we have come up short for a variety of reasons. This doesn’t bode well for the pressure cauldron of a play-off semi-final where we must be favourites to shit ourselves. Anyway, twenty four points left to play for. Russell’s making noises about winning the lot and getting to 98 points. Yeah, alright mate. Up the Fucking Saints.
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