Closing Time

So, we found our way to the last last chance saloon. Big Liam even managed to get us a drink in. But after just over an hour gradually sliding off our bar stool, the bartender, a Portuguese fellow with a salt and pepper beard, decided enough was enough and tossed us unceremoniously out into the street. Goodbye The Prem, it has not been a pleasure.

It is customary after such rough treatment to declare said establishment to be “a shithole anyway”. On Saturday afternoon The Prem certainly did its best to remind us what an unpleasant place it is to sup. There were three interminable VAR delays to confirm the assistant’s correct call for each of the goals, the third very much coming with a big air of “for god’s sake put us out of our misery”. I am looking forward to on-field referees taking sole charge of our fixtures next season. The goals were distributed through a full 90 minutes of attritional suffer-ball that was ninety-nine parts physical exertion for every one part joy and imagination.

The opposition were roundly superior, as they usually have been this season, but also seemed to have an even higher quotient than usual of The Prem’s worst genre of regular – what I’d like to call the “aggro-whiney shithouse-soft boi” – ready at a moment’s notice to flip from ultra hard man to whimpering victim.

Wolves’ players set about roughing us up all first half, their physicality only partially alleviated by a referee prepared to give free kicks, but no yellow cards, no matter how many offences were totted up. One nil up in what was allegedly a relegation six pointer, “that was gritty” was the most positive thing I could think of to say at half time.

In the second period the referee decided to withdraw even the minor protection of his whistle, entirely leaving the Ipswich players to fend for themselves. Even five minutes in it was obvious we were physically overmatched, passively holding on to our fragile lead, unable to get even the vaguest grasp on Wolves’ central midfielders – Andre and João Gomes – products of a Lusophone world network simply beyond our ken. Would you believe that no Brazilian or Portuguese has ever played for Ipswich Town?

Gomes rattled the post before Pablo Sarabia’s equaliser, Andre set the second in motion, chip wedging a ball to the back post for Sarabia to cross. Midfield was the most obvious gulf between the two teams, though in truth it’s hard to pick out a player in blue who would have made the starting line-up for the team in gold.

For a game that Ipswich weren’t truly out of until the 84^th minute, it was a remarkably unequivocal verdict on our season. An absolute no contest of a narrow win, in a home game between the 18^th -best team in the league and allegedly the 17^th -best, though in truth anyone who has watched Wolves recently knows they’re probably a fair bit better than that. They seemed to draw extra motivation here from avenging the consequences of their tantrum in the reverse fixture, capering around after full time in celebration of finally winning justice for Matheus Cunha’s missed FA Cup tie. 2-1 flattered the home team and there was absolutely no pretending we had been hard done by here. 

There wasn’t much space to pretend we had shot ourselves in the foot either. There was nothing reckless or purist here. We set about defending our one-goal lead in the manner that the old school footballers on the pundit sofas seem to think a guarantee of success. Five defenders and two defensive midfielders, sitting deep, knocking it long and keeping our shape. We challenged Wolves to play through us and it turned out they were just fine with that actually. Contra the received wisdom, there are actually 100 different ways for the likes of us to lose Premier League games and very few ways to win them.

We’ve only found a way to do that once at home all season, which is a pretty miserable experience really. Nothing but punishment for the unfortunate season ticket holder. At this point I can’t think of anything worse than a massive points deduction for Manchester City condemning us to a second successive year of this treatment. Let’s go see if we can get a drink at The Champ, far better company in there anyway.