Iron-willed Ipswich Town still winless but only growing in confidence after Aston Villa draw

Steven Chicken 29 Sep 2024 4:20 PM

Liam Delap celebrates one of his goals against Aston Villa

Liam Delap was a constant threat to the Aston Villa defence and came away with a brace

Confidence is a fragile beast in football, and for newly-promoted sides coming up from the Championship, well aware of the huge step up that now exists between the two divisions, you often see it ebb away with startling rapidity.

Not so for Ipswich Town. After claiming their back-to-back promotions all the way from League One to the top flight, the Tractor Boys retain an indomitable self-belief that helped them come from behind to claim an excellent 2-2 draw against an Aston Villa outfit that has made iron resolve their forte.

Even after being handed an exceptionally difficult fixture list, Ipswich have never looked over-awed by their opponents, and even after their winless start to the season, they clearly retain a firm belief in what they are doing – even after requiring a late escape against fellow new boys Southampton last weekend.

A lot of this game played out like two_spidermans_pointing.jpg, with the sides offering a mirror image of one another tactically: get back in numbers when under pressure in your own half, look to counter quickly, and pour numbers forward to do so.

It’s testament to Ipswich that they got the better of those battles as often as not, and were particularly successful when they made things scrappy in midfield. Their dedication to coming out of those duels with the ball at their feet, rather than the opposition’s, was the source of their most dangerous openings throughout the first half.

Villa might rightly feel aggrieved at the softness of the foul given against Amadou Onana from which Ipswich took their lead, but those protests can be slapped down by pointing out that it came in the Ipswich half and they still had a hell of a long way to go to actually get it in the net.

Liam Delap went totally unmarked in the second phase of Ipswich’s assault on the box, allowing him the freedom to imbue his strike with such power that you could barely blame Emiliano Martinez for being so thoroughly wrong-footed, much as it didn’t look great from the Villa goalkeeper on first glance.

The newly-promoted side showed some callowness in conceding their equaliser. Jacob Greaves did well to get the better of Ollie Watkins as the England international tried to get to the equaliser, only to bafflingly and blindly punt his attempted clearance straight into the danger zone for Morgan Rogers to control and then fire home after a swift one-two with Watkins.

When Watkins then headed home a delicious Leon Bailey cross just after the half hour, you wondered whether Ipswich would actually have anything left to give.

Delap’s early strike was the third time Ipswich had scored in the first 15 minutes of games this season; they had only scored in the remaining 75 minutes once, and that was against Southampton. The corollary of that is that Ipswich had taken the lead three times in the Premier League yet were still yet to taste their first victory.

You can understand why, playing like this. This brand of football is incredibly tiring: high intensity in all areas of the pitch, with constant sprinting required to maintain the numbers Kieran McKenna demands at both ends.

On top of that, although Villa and Ipswich were mirror images on the pitch, they could scarcely have been more antithetical in their statistics.

Unai Emery’s side have excelled for a long time at protecting their leads – they dropped just seven points from winning positions last season, the best record in the division – but had so far been the comeback kings of the Premier League, overcoming adversity to beat Everton and Wolves. No side had scored more goals in the final 15 minutes of games than Villa’s four.

Yet Ipswich adapted and kept going. Immediately after going behind, they twice forced good saves out of Martinez, including an excellent sprawling starfish save with his feet to stop Delap finishing off a one v one.

Undeterred, Ipswich continued to give as good as they got into the second half as they attempted to show us why they won more games than they lost from losing positions on their way to promotion last season, when exactly a third of their 96 points came in games in which they had fallen behind.

Ipswich were no longer getting into the Villa box five or six blue shirts at a time, but were far more incisive with their passing and intelligent with their positioning. No side had taken fewer shots per game this season than Ipswich (just 7.6), and no side had taken a higher percentage from outside the box (42.1%), but you would not know that to watch them here.

They finally got their rewards for that as Delap cut inside from the left, made Diego Carlos look an absolute chump with a stepover, then fired into the far bottom corner for 2-2.

It was no less than McKenna’s side deserved for a superb performance in which they looked the equals of Champions League-level opposition for so much of the game. If anybody looked likely to win it late on, it was Ipswich, not their high-calibre visitors – helped by having been lucky to avoid a second yellow card for Sam Morsy.

That first Premier League win for 22 years still remains elusive for Ipswich, but you feel it is only a matter of time before it comes – and the early indications are that far from shrinking from the challenge, they may actually be better placed than any of the newly-promoted trio to keep it going.

F365 Says Kieran Mckenna

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