The View From Churchmans

Right, this nonsense has to stop. Home defeats in the league, an away victory in the league, and most unlikely of all, two League Cup wins. This is not my Ipswich at all! Having missed the first three games of the season at FPR, I was anxious to get my fix at last, and intrigued to see what another Summer Of Change had brought us. Compared to last May’s Hull game (my last fixture at FPR), only three players were in both starting lineups, and four of our players from back then had left the club completely.

Colchester were, unusually, given the whole of the upper tier of the Cobbold Stand, and filled about two-thirds of it, but this had the effect of spreading out their support, which wasn’t nearly as excitable as in our last two league encounters. And as they began to troop out prematurely after 80 minutes, the North Stand sang – brilliantly – “We’ll never see you again”. Their players seemed well up for it, but the game was still an exceedingly clean one. However, Town rarely got into third gear, and to be honest, never really needed to.

The formation was perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the evening – probably a 4-3-3, but with the centre players in midfield and up front (Campo and Counago) playing quite deep. With another bunch of changes, there wasn’t much cohesion, but overall the workrate was pretty good. Campo just dominated proceedings in the centre of our lineup with a sheer presence which made you almost unable to take your eyes off of him. Quite simply, almost everything seemed to revolve around him. Whilst some of his game was probably a little rough around the edges, the outstanding image of the game was him striding forward out of defence with seemingly the whole pitch open to him. Sadly, Counago was about the only player to take advantage of this and make himself available, but we could really have a player here who’s a class above the rest of the division. When Campo was substituted, our game lost all its inspiration. Interestingly, although he was playing just in front of our “team captain” and “club captain”, he seemed to be the de facto captain (as well as playmaker), continuing to give directions from the touchline right to the end. Very interesting.

Overall Town performance:
6/10 – good enough, although a few players were anonymous

Opposition quality:
5/10 – solid enough, but never really worried us

Referee:
7/10 – had very little to do, and barely put a foot wrong

Match excitement:
6/10 – the quality wasn’t great, but the atmosphere was fun

Opposition supporters:
6/10 – quite a lot of them, but not particularly entertaining

Player ratings as ever 1 to 5 for each of effort/achievement…

WRIGHT 5 (3/2) was OK, and made a couple of decent saves, but seems unpredictable, and was caught in no-man’s land for Colchester’s goal

CASEMENT 6 (3/3) was presumably on show for any interested parties who might want to take him on loan, because he appears to be about fourth choice as right-back now, and dropping, which is sad for a potentially decent talent who worked hard under constant pressure; NAYLOR 7 (3/4) was committed throughout and made a typically never-say-die goal-line clearance towards the end; McCAULEY 6 (3/3) seemed fairly sound, if unremarkable and lacking in much presence; and THATCHER 5 (2/3) did little wrong, but had almost no threat to defend against and it was therefore disappointing that he didn’t get involved more – Harding, for example, would have had a field day with so much space in front of him.

TROTTER 7 (4/3) worked hard and is becoming an exciting prospect – he really is huge now, isn’t he?; CAMPO 8 (4/4) towered over the game in a footballing sense, winning as many tackles as Miller and Garvan usually do between them; but QUINN 4 (2/2) was the night’s biggest let-down, scurrying around a lot but achieving very little.

WALTERS 6 (4/2) worked hard, backtracking behind Casement on numerous occasions, but seemed to find it hard to fit into this formation – it was telling that his best contribution was a cross to Lisbie on a rare occasion where he got out really wide; COUNAGO 8 (4/4) had a fine game, encouragingly for the whole 90 minutes, and although he might have got a few more shots in, he did get the one which really counted; and although LISBIE 6 (3/3) remained reluctant to run with the ball, when he did so, you could see where his strength lies – I’m sure there’s better to come.

From the bench, HAYNES was disappointingly uninvolved, as was MILLER, it has to be said.