Straws

I warned you all that I am at heart a "happy clapper" and that by the time Aston Villa rolled around I'd be ready to get hurt again. So here I am, doing the work, rebuilding a sense of belief against all the odds. Promoted teams don't get better after Christmas. Wolves have posted mid-table form since appointing some random fella from the Saudi Pro League as manager. Everybody else is 10 points away. We just lost to the only team we're definitely better than. Bla bla bla. We're 3 points off safety there's 14 games left and I'm here to find some hope, god damn it.

So here we go with my Top Five Ipswich Town Survival Straws to cling to like a drowning man desperately holding onto driftwood.

5. Let it Go

Maybe this is one of those forlorn hopes that football fans always have, but it feels to me like a lot of our players have been a bit hamstrung by just how close the relegation race has been so far. We have barely ever been more than one win away from safety, barely ever looked nailed on for relegation.

I have seen us play with a lot of determination and effort this season, but I don't think I've seen us play "care free" since the opening day against Liverpool. Every home game against the teams we want to catch up to has been tense as hell and we've played like a team trying to carry a fragile vase during an earthquake. I think I've lost count of the number of times our players have been so paralysed by pressure in an attacking area that they've just declined to make any decision at all, even a bad one.

Well, here we are lads, impossible fixtures as far as the eye can see, Wolves disappearing into the distance and playing better than their league position. Relax, calm down, find your identity, play your football. See what you can do now relegation is the default.

4. How Deep is your Bench?

One of the big differences between this season and last is that last year our substitutions tended to improve us. If we were still in the game with 30 to go on would come Sarmiento, Harness, Al-Hamadi, Jackson, Hutchinson (until he became a regular starter) and momentum would swing our way.

The only game our subs have turned for us this season was Wolves away. Too often we've found no-one on our bench ready to bring things home. Going forward though, there's a good chance we have a few options capable of affecting things. Neither Jaden Philogene nor Jack Clarke have been instant hits in the Premier League, but maybe impressive goals in the FA Cup might unlock something in them. Clarke more than anyone has looked stressed in league action, perhaps he's one who can relax a bit now everything's gone wrong.

George Hirst has looked accomplished in every appearance for us this season. He's fit now and I choose to believe he'll get a run of games. He feels injury prone but we got a good 12 months of football out of him in 2023, before that unfortunate injury against Leicester. Hopefully after his start against Coventry we can get Delap to do shorter stints at higher intensity with Hirst waiting in the wings. Then get either Szmodics or Chaplin fit and we're in good place.

3. Spring Affair

We all know that the Premier League is not the Championship and it certainly isn't League One. So if you need to take this one with a pinch of salt, go ahead, but... the last two seasons McKenna's team kicked on after Valentine's Day. Kicked on is an understatement really. In 2023 and 2024, Ipswich spent January and early February bogged down in a morass, splodging forward at barely a point per game. 1 win and just 9 points from 8 games between December 29^th and February 14^th in 2023, 1 win and just 9 points from 9 games between December 16^th and February 10^th in 2024. Then the window closed, problems were fixed, we exited the swamp and sprinted towards the finishing line like Forrest Gump throwing off his leg braces. That 2023 patch was followed by 13 wins in 14 games, the 2024 funk by 9 wins in the next 10. Continue the pattern and win 5 from 6 and I’ll be more than happy.

Now, Saint Valentine probably isn't the patron saint of Ipswich finishing the season well (in addition to his other responsibilities). I don’t imagine this is a destiny thing. I hope it is the effect of good sports science planning, where training and match load is calculated effectively to put us in a good place physically around this time of year. I hope it is a product of good, problem-solving recruitment that fixes flaws that have emerged in season.

Anyway, now is the time McKenna's teams really start to roll.

2. Palmer is a relaxing thought

I hate casting out blame and goalkeepers are natural scapegoats. Every goal conceded has a whole village of negligent parents and the guy watching the ball sail past him into the net is often the least to blame.

However. The absolute simplest way to lose a lot of football matches is your keeper not saving shots. The process whereby you freeze frame a defensive line and work out who hasn't marked who and who's standing in the wrong place (allocating blame along the way) is fair enough but ultimately in every game you will give up shooting opportunities. What is realistic to demand from your defence is that the numbers are kept reasonable. What is realistic to demand of your goalkeeper is that he keeps somewhere between 65 and 80 per cent of the shots he does face out of his goal. Our last four games make grim reading in that regard. 24 shots on target, 14 goals conceded, 10 saves made and two of those were scored on the rebound.

When you get a run like that you just aren't going to win any football matches. Walton had a similar spell in League One and we didn't win any of those games ceither, despite having a team good enough to finish second in the division above. Everybody has a plan until they get smacked in the mouth and every time you concede to the opposition's first shot on target you're taking a nasty jab right to your jaw.

Enter Alex Palmer. Palmer always looked very accomplished when we played West Brom, a cool character and most of all a keeper who saved a decent number of shots.

It's a shame that Aro Muric has a struggled. In terms of his underlying attributes, he's a better goalkeeper than we could ordinarily afford. Sadly, his big errors are also something we can't ordinarily afford. Christian Walton deserved his shot at Premier League football but if we're to have any hope of staying up those first goals against Brighton, City and Liverpool need to stay out of the net. It's harsh to say because only Brighton gets close to being an error error. Szoboszlai's goal is a lovely hit, but (per opta) 76% of keepers save it. That's the bar when you're one of the weakest attacking teams in the league.

If Palmer manages to be even a middling Premier League shot stopper and avoids having a goal conceding error every other game, we’ll give ourselves a chance in a lot more games.

1. Julio the Hook

I once found myself watching Toy Story in Spanish. As a then novice Hispanophone I picked up a fair bit of new vocabulary but one scene in particular stayed with me. On their journey, Buzz and Woody meet some alien toys living in a claw machine. In English these toys chorus "The Claaaaaaw" to acclaim the grabbing device that determines their fate. In Spanish, meanwhile, their worshipful cry is for "ENGAAAANCHE", usually translated as "hook".¹

Enganche, as fans of Latin American football (or the Football Manager series) will know, is also a football term. Deployed for the classic number 10 position, it indicates a player whose skill, as well as their ability to find space and then keep the ball, allows their team to use them as a way of gaining purchase in attacking areas. Like a grappling hook, the enganche aids your attacking climb through the thirds, allows you to find purchase higher up the mountain and hopefully divine a clear route to your final goal.

Thus, I too find myself worshipfully chanting "ENGAAAANCHEE" and hoping a “hook” might change our destiny. There's been a lot of focus on our two deeper midfielder positions of late, with worries that none of Morsy, Cajuste or Phillips have found a way to control games for long enough. Maybe a month or so ago, I might have written hoping that a run of games for Phillips might transform that situation, but it seems apparent now that McKenna does not see that as a solution. So, now I wonder if there's another route to asserting ourselves in midfield.

Since we list our formation as 4-2-3-1, we aren't really in the habit of listing our Number Ten as a midfielder, but the role occupied historically by Conor Chaplin and more latterly by Omari Hutchinson absolutely requires midfielder-ish qualities. Chaplin particularly always looks to drop deep to pick up the ball and then play short passes between opposition midfielders, knock cross field balls to the other flank and swing the ball down the line for Burns to run onto. Hutchinson has that superior ball carrying ability but he's not proven quite as adept at linking play between midfield and attack. Even this season, Chaplin probably produced our most authentic enganche performance, against Brentford.

The exciting headline with Enciso is that he's a shot monster and a great dribbler, against Southampton he managed 6 of each. But the thing that has the potential to change our season is just how much of the ball he saw against Southampton and how it stuck with him. 40 completed passes, 85 touches. Even allowing for how much we dominated possession as a team, no attacking player we’ve put out has got close to that all season (Omari managed 57 in the defeat to Everton, the previous high). He looks robust, hard to knock off the ball. He seems to take care of possession without being so conservative with the ball that it dulls his threat. Had he pinged one of his many shots in the top corner and won us the game against Southampton, I might have hailed Julio potentially season transforming. Maybe I still will.

These are my straws, I’m holding them close to my chest. There’s nothing else for it.

1  I checked after I finished writing and “enganche” thing in Toy Story is a false memory - the aliens say “el gancho” (the claw) - but I liked the bit so I’m keeping it as artistic licence.