No Complaints

How to process the result of any football match is, usually, fairly obvious. Wins can be enjoyed either as comfortable assertions of superiority or sometimes as demonstrations of heroic determination in the face of stronger opposition. Draws can be frustrating missed opportunities or valuable points imprisoned for the long winter ahead. Defeats have greater range but still fall into recognizable categories. They can be unlucky, the fault of referees, opposition skullduggery or just bad luck. They can be a product of your own failings, the inevitable conclusion of your extensive and long-standing flaws. Sometimes, when the other team are of a different order in terms of size and resources, they can just be write-offs – we never had a chance.

I have all these standard feelings. They might produce a paean to a high performer, praise for McKenna and his side, measured thoughts, rage or impotent fretting. I don’t know if I have a straightforward take on Nottingham Forest 1 Ipswich Town 0. Forest are in that category of Premier League opponent that feels like a scalable mountain. It’s damn hard scrabbling up Snowden but it isn’t Mount Everest. I had a bad feeling before Saturday’s game but it is not quite a defeat you can shrug your shoulders at. There are too many Nottingham Forests in this division to lose to all of them and not get cut adrift. You do need to slog up some of these big hills.

Yet I’m not convinced we did a tremendous amount wrong in this one. We were defensively solid and mostly contained the impressive Morgan Gibbs-White. The burly Elliott Anderson was likewise kept under control. Incidentally, since when did number tens start appearing in such a build? Him and Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers look like the muscle for a mafia boss, but somehow also have the first touch of Juan Roman Riquelme. Jota Silva and Callum Hudson-Odoi were flighty, frivolous, mostly unthreatening, certainly until we obliged the former with one rash step.

Now, we weren’t exactly ripping Forest to shreds at the other end. Conor Chaplin was doing a great job wriggling out of tackles, into space and feeding his wingers but Murillo in his enormous shorts (Jack Clarke must have been jealous) and Nikola Milenkovic were guarding the penalty area with considerable proficiency. They were as sturdy a partnership as we have faced this season.

Yet we were doing what decent away sides must – keeping it tight, taking the sting out of the game, riding out pressure, winning attacking set pieces. Cameron Burgess’ 23rd minute header from Leif Davis’ corner was probably the game’s best opening before the break (Hudson-Odoi had a better one but refused to shoot for some reason, very peculiar player). Chaplin might have had an even clearer sight had his centre forward not got in his way for the second game running. Perhaps he needs to up the volume when he calls for the ball?

And so to the second half. Four minutes in one of those totally justified penalties that nevertheless feels like harsh punishment. One leg needlessly inserted in just the wrong place, not denying a good goalscoring opportunity nor wiping out an opponent. No, just landing disastrously in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only a modicum of blame for Sammie Szmodics. His interjection was scarcely more reckless or foolish than dozens of other clumsy legs thrown around in almost every football match. Sometimes calamity just calls for you. Nonetheless, it lost us the game.

Even after Chris Wood had dispatched the penalty we still more or less did the things an away team needs to do. We stayed in the game, we didn’t concede again, we gradually pushed the home side back towards their own penalty area. We tried, where we could, to play the percentages, taking long shots, throwing in crosses and winning attacking set pieces. Forest though were extremely adept at blocking angles and harrying wannabe shooters. There was seldom enough daylight to “take a dig”.

They never felt in much trouble, but it felt like it was more their defensive efficiency rather than our attacking deficiency that was the main cause. The best team in the division failed to break them down after going behind, so our struggles were perhaps understandable. We probably aren’t the only team in the division lacking the ability to break down a good, compact Premier League defence in “manage the game” mode without scoring a worldie, a set piece or a fluke and we gave ourselves a decent enough chance of getting one of those.

Ultimately though, it was a game we lost because of a moment and a game we might have won with just one fortuitous moment. What do you do with that sort of defeat? Not one you can resign yourself to but, really, just one of those afternoons. Not a performance you could praise, but equally not one you can really get angry about.

We could do worse than make every away close enough to be settled by just a moment and if we do, we’ll still have plenty more unsatisfactory afternoons like Saturday. No complaints, I suppose. No complaints with us, no complaints with them, no complaints with the referee, no complaints with fate. No complaints, just disappointment. Disappointment that those fine margins continue to stand between us and that last little step up in results. That moment where we really convince as potential survivors.