Stay Frosty

After our games with Leeds and Leicester, I couldn’t help but reflect on how outcome focused supporters can be sometimes. Football is a series of haphazard low-scoring events and usually best judged over time periods extending considerably longer than ninety minutes. Ninety minutes can often trick you into learning things that aren’t really true or calling for things that won’t really help.  

I can remember one game, right at the beginning of Paul Lambert’s final season, where we marmalised Blackpool 4-1 away in one of those iFollow lockdown games in a haunted, empty stadium. Sat in my living room, Brenner Woolley’s commentary interspersed with player shouts that made everything feel a bit Sunday League, I thought what a wonderful performance, what brilliant goals, maybe we’ll make something of this season after all!

But this was one of those ninety-minute mirages, where a game is shaped more by its moments of definition than by the overall qualities of the two sides. By half time the score read 3-0, the product of four shots, a half volley from the edge of the box by Luke Chambers (19 goals in 396 appearances for Ipswich) , a low Gwion Edwards (14 in 109) drive towards the near post through a thicket of players from a tight angle, a placed effort from 20 yards with Teddy Bishop’s (5 in 132) weaker foot, a half chance that fell to Oli Hawkins (he missed). You ended the game feeling like a billion-dollar promotion team.

Of course, as it transpired Blackpool’s Neil Critchley was building a far superior side that would ultimately charge to promotion. It wasn't necessarily that the result was undeserved. Good finishing is a skill and we played some good football. However, realistically in football you score from roughly one in twelve attempts at goal and no team is going to live with you very long if you have a day where shots number 1, 2 and 4 all end up beating the goalkeeper.

Nor are you going to hang in there very long in any game where you contrive some calamitous method to let the opposition score from their first, third and fifth attacks. We got to full time against Leeds with the strong sense that we’d been totally outclassed by a far superior team. After losing 4-0 and playing out the last half hour to a chorus of olés, it seemed delusional to argue otherwise. Consistency might see us over the line to promotion, but we weren’t going toe-to-toe with these any time soon.

Like Blackpool away on opposite day, before half time we found a way to concede from almost every Leeds attack. The Whites were gifted one raid forward, courtesy of some bad “big-game-let-it-flow” refereeing, they scored from the corner. They had two good counter attacks, one ended in Leif Davis converting a rather tame cross, the other he turned a half chance to shoot into a penalty. It wasn’t that we were hard-done-by at 3-0 down or Leeds were particularly poor value for their lead, just that three goals from five attempts on goal is one of those days that neither side is going to repeat very often. “They look like scoring every time they go forward” is a classic football cliché but the “look like” is a key part of the phrase, teams usually don’t.

There was a bit of an air of resignation after that demolition, where every punch they landed connected directly with our jaw. Suspicions crept in that we didn’t have the ability or athleticism to truly live with these temporarily embarrassed Premier League sides, that to keep pace we’d need either a raft of higher-quality reinforcements or somehow to maintain our outrageous level of consistency against the rest of the division, whilst buckling up for a painful 270 minutes in our three remaining games against the relegated sides. The following Boxing Day against Leicester might also be a bloodbath if we didn’t adopt a bit more caution.

Yet, we need not have worried quite so much. Against Leicester we set up in our customary fashion, we pushed Davis high on the left, we encouraged our centre backs to be proactive in winning possession, we committed players to work overloads down the flanks, we tried to get the midfielders forward when we could. At times we left Burgess, Woolfenden and Clarke strung out as a wide back three, tasked somehow with marking four Leicester players spread out across the pitch, with Mavadidi hugging the left touchline and Ndidi sprinting off Morsy to join the front line.

Leicester hurt us in transition almost as much as Leeds did. At times they also “looked like scoring every time they went forward”. They even scored with their second attempt on goal (xG 0.06), a well-executed shot from what was really just a half chance. But they scored (a statistically more normal) 0 times from 2 corners, rather than 1 from 2, Daka got his ineffectual shot away rather than being generously bundled over for a penalty and we never turned any of their dangerous-ish low crosses into our own net.

It was just one sucker punch this time, rather than three, so we stayed in the game and unlike at Elland Road gave ourselves the opportunity to have an impact going the other way. Leicester’s penalty box defending was pretty immaculate. A lot of blocks (9) and clearances (26), a lot of tackles and interceptions in their own area. There was a point where Nathan Broadhead dropped his shoulder and shifted the ball neatly, a move that would’ve usually bought him an inch of space for a shot from most centre backs, but got short shrift from Jannik Vestergaard. It was good, diligent, organised stuff, but force your opponent to do enough good, diligent, organised stuff in their own penalty area and there's a reasonable chance something will drop your way. When it did, we more than deserved it, having totted up 19 shots to 5, 11 corners to 2, and 1.07 xG to 0.30 (although Leicester might have had another 0.77 or so if they'd had a 2020-vintage ref, but no-one is getting that sort of penalty this season).

We deserved it largely for the defending. In transition, Leicester were fast and precise and it was impressive to limit them to just three more shots at goal whilst chasing the game for 69 minutes. That we did was huge credit to Luke Woolfenden and Harry Clarke down the right in particular. Woolfenden had one of those nights where the opposition’s quality seems to elevate him. As if he’s just thought “oh, okay then, that’s how good I have to be” and turned a dial internally. I’d love to drop him into a Champions League final marking Kylian Mbappe and see whether the same thing would happen. Defending a high line against some of the best forwards he’ll ever face, his positioning, tackling, aerial and ground defending were outstanding.

Clarke got some stick for not getting closer to Mavadidi, but we’ve seen that pattern enough times to know that’s a product of the back three shuffling across as instructed when Davis goes high, not Clarke just dozily forgetting to mark his man.1 Second half, he had to cope with a lot of one-on-one defending and kept Mavadidi far quieter than he really had any right to. If McKenna is going to leave him week after week to deal with one of the opposition’s star attacking players, to get isolated and run at with pace, the least we can do is give him some credit when he copes, even if it’s not always pretty.

That’s four games in our little mini-league down, with a record of 1 win, 1 draw, 2 losses, goal difference -4. What did we learn? Well, first thing, that ninety minutes doesn’t always tell you the story. Take out the head-to-heads and Leeds are a whopping 14 points worse than us, which is certainly a comforting thought given our games with them are now done. As Plymouth will tell you, a successful season doesn’t require that you never get gubbed and in the greater scheme of things it doesn’t cost you that much if you don’t let it derail you. Beyond that, we’ve shown ourselves capable of competing with Leicester and Southampton, should head-to-heads end up being decisive (they probably won’t).

For me though, I think the biggest thing we learned was to stay frosty. The outcome of the last match often feels like it tells you something profound about your team but it rarely does. You take blow after blow for 45 minutes and you can’t help but imagine the worst and start planning some revolution in tactics or personnel. Without a fortunate deflection we might have added another defeat last night and that pressure would have grown still further. Yet neither result would have fundamentally changed what we are as a team. We had one game where everything went wrong, another where one thing just about went right, but more than that we’ve had 22 other matches this season and there’s plentiful evidence in there that we are genuinely the real deal. It is the overall outcome that defines us.  

Harry Clarke v Leicester City

Accurate passes 33/41 (80%)

Chances created 1

Touches 71

Touches in opposition box 1

Successful dribbles 1/1 (100%)

Accurate crosses 1/2 (50%)

Accurate long balls 3/5 (60%)

Dispossessed 0

Tackles won 2/3 (67%)

Last man tackle 1

Clearances 1

Interceptions 1

Defensive actions 6

Recoveries 6

Dribbled past 1

Ground duels won 4/6 (67%)

Aerial duels won 2/2 (100%)

Was fouled 0

Fouls committed 1