Let’s rewind to that 5-3 win at Sincil Bank, a game in which we all got a glimpse of Michael Appleton’s attacking style properly. We’d lost two on the spin going into that encounter and were entering a transitional phase. Five of the players from that starting squad are no longer with the club, including some of the unused subs. Five of the players who played on the day were not part of yesterday’s action. The game took place less than one month ago.
That’s a huge amount of change and yet we still went to the league leaders and held our own. We certainly weren’t played off the park, we just didn’t play oursevles on it. We weren’t outclassed either, despite Ipswich’s deep squad and pedigree. No, we went there and gave them a game, even if we didn’t seriously trouble them a great amount. On the flip side, apart from a goal we gifted them from a cheap free kick, they didn’t really trouble us. It was a nothing encounter between two sides I feel looked too good to go down and not good enough to go up. Only, that’s not strictly true, because one of the teams are top and gunning for the Championship.
I can see the negatives; I called Harry Anderson’s lack of output in one of the videos I did last week; he doesn’t play well when up against a wing back and a centre half expected to drop in behind when the opposition are attacking and that was the case again yesterday. I felt a couple of our young players, lauded last weekend for their performances against Blackpool, were average. Max Melbourne perhaps felt a little phased by an 18,000 crowd, a crowd that kept Lincoln’s fans quiet and subdued throughout. Portman Road can be an intimidating place, both for the home team when they’re not winning, but certainly for the away side when their backs are up. Let’s not forget, that’s Melbourne’s second Football League game and he came up against Championship quality footballers.
He wasn’t the only one who didn’t shine compared to last week. Tayo Edun was certainly quieter and the front two just didn’t quite gel either. As I’ve mentioned, Harry was virtually non-existent and even Joe Morrell looked, at times, a little laboured. Ipswich won the midfield battle with possession and yet didn’t press home the advantage against our back four because, in my eyes, they couldn’t. Cian Bolger was excellent, Neal Eardley had a solid game and I felt Jorge Grant did offer some quality on the ball further forward, even if his endeavour didn’t bring an end product.
The point is this; we won’t win every game. Sure, our away form hasn’t been the best, but do we really need calls for Appleton to ‘sort it out’, when we’re 12th in the third tier? This is a fledgeling team with a lot of young players in their first proper senior roles and they went to a former Championship club in front of 18,000 fans and stopped them running riot. It wasn’t a strong performance, it wasn’t a win, but there wasn’t a gulf in class. It’s not like we were given a lesson in what’s required at this level; in four games against Ipswich we haven’t been shown anything we didn’t know. I felt Bury, Crewe and Colchester all gave us more problems last year, home and away, than Ipswich did yesterday. Is that because they’re a bad side? No, they’re top of League One. It’s a testament to us, even if we didn’t shine ourselves.
We do good work without the ball, we have talented players still finding their feet and of our six away games remaining we have the three bottom teams to play and don’t go to anyone higher than 11th in the table. We can point at our wretched form but I feel the three 1-0 defeats we’ve had in the last month and a half (Coventry, Oxford and Ipswich) all gave us something we could take away, if not points, and had Wycombe, Doncaster, Coventry, Peterborough, Portsmouth and Fleetwood have all only won one game more than we have on our travels, with Gillingham, Bolton and MK Dons all winning fewer. Sure, we’re not brilliant away from home, but we have at least won a couple and kept the points slowly coming in.
As for home games, only Wycombe have won more at home than us (ten to our nine) and they’ve played two more. The signs are still there that we’re making progress but we’re not going to win every game and at the beginning of the season, you would never have called Ipswich Town away as a game we were likely to get anything from. There isn’t a need to dissect the game, analyse what went wrong and call players out because frankly, we’re performing above expectations at the end of September and every story has a few disappointing chapters. This was one of them, now let us turn our attentions to Pompey at home and hopefully, another peak to mask the trough of yesterday’s result.
No pics from yesterday I’m afraid as our top man Bubs is currently not well. Make sure you wish him all the best if you’re friends on social media.
Some sane reading amongst the nonsense elswhere.
3 draws in the next two games will look like a good outcome against these sides so a win in either is just as good points wise. As you explain we are not far off despite the rebuilding process.
That may become more difficult or slower if we lose our two best performing players.
Not many teams will like coming to the bank with our record that’s for sure!
We have, for a January Window made some significant changes. New players need time to bed in! Half the side yesterday had not played more than a couple of goals for the Club! Just a reminder to short sited fans, this is League One!
for goals” read “games! lol.
I thought the defence were excellent and believe Tyler and TJJ will forge a fruitful partnership. We weren’t outplayed and I for one feel less concerned than I did a couple of weeks ago. The were 700+ of us there but it was strangely quiet all match – weird.