Boro v Ipswich Town.

Friday 17 October, 20.00

Ah, the Tractor Boys. Not their official nickname, you understand, but so much more evocative than just ´Town’ and much more colourful than ‘The Blues.’ Anyway, it’s a name  Ipswich fans revel in now, apparently, much as we happily adopted Smoggies. And what could be more of a contrast than the Smoggies versus the Tractor Boys? Dirty hands meet dirty wellies. Heavy industry meets gentleman farmers! And Ed Sheeran.

I’ve long envied those of you who are able to incorporate various funny bits and puns as threads running through your starters, but I’m hopeless at that. So how could I approach the Tractor Boys and keep it light-hearted?

I wondered which side McKenna might field. How will he combine their talents? Does he have a crop of good youngsters? Does he play the kids? Are they still a bit green and tender or have they sprouted  maturely? Is he a horses for courses manager, or does he rotate his crop successfully?

I wondered if Town will be cowed by Boro and turn up like lambs to the slaughter, or will they come at us like a bull at a gate? I’m expecting them to play cultured football, not agricultural, hoof-it-up stuff.

Are they at a fork in the road in their season, or do they have confidence in spades? Will they chicken out of heavy tackles, or will they cook our goose?

It’s not quite true that Town’s strikers couldn’t hit a barn door last season, though they didn’t score many in the Prem. Their fans probably felt they wouldn’t score till the cows came home. Liam Delap ploughed a bit of a lone furrow and the team went through fallow periods where they didn’t get any points.

Hoe, hoe, hoe. Enough of this idle banter. There’s a hell of a game coming up Friday!

A home game against relegated Ipswich, the promotion favourites, isn’t the ideal match we would have chosen for a reset. Kieron McKenna did a brilliant job in taking them from League One to the Premiership in successive seasons. He couldn’t keep them up last year, of course, but remains very much at the helm. They were tipped as one of this season’s favourites to go straight back up, but haven’t yet quite hit the heights they reached in our league two seasons ago. Nonetheless, I’m sure they’ll provide another formidable challenge, as they’ve started to get into their stride.

They’ll come to The Riverside on the back of a 3-1 win over arch rivals, Norwich. It was Town’s first Old Farm derby win for an incredible 16 years, though we must say that for many of those years the two clubs have been in different divisions. No doubt the win will have boosted their morale and confidence and they’ll come fired up. It moved them up to 9th and they now have 13 points. Ipswich have only lost once so far, a 1-0 defeat at PNE. No shame in that!  They’ve played one game less than everyone else following the 80th minute abandonment of their game at Blackburn when they were down to ten men and losing 1-0.

After a slow start to life back in the second tier, the Tractor Boys began to find momentum in September, claiming seven points from a possible nine to stay unbeaten, including a 5-0 demolition of Wilder’s woeful whipping-boys, a 2-1 win over Portsmouth and a 1-1 draw at Bristol City. As a result, McKenna was named Championship manager of the month for September. They’re on a good run of form, then, and clearly no mugs. This is a really tough test. Though if this were Boro being awarded the manager of the month gong, we’d probably expect to lose, so there’s hope!

Ipswich apparently have serious financial backing, and have kept much of their Premier League squad together, as well as others who went up with them from the Championship. ‘It's a solid blueprint for how to handle parachute payments- invest in continuity rather than panic,’ (quoted from the article on EFL estimated wage bills.) It reminds me of the Burnley model, which worked very well for them for a time under Sean Dyche.

A front three of Jadon Philogene, George Hirst and Sammy Szmodics looks fearsome, and they have Chuba Akpom and Jack Clarke in reserve. We’ll need to keep close tabs on left-back, Leif Davis, who created loads of chances with his wand of a left foot last time they were in our division. He’s a sort of Ryan Giles Mark 1, but might hopefully resemble Mark II when it comes to defending.

This home game takes us to the 10-game point, the benchmark against which we all set our early expectations under Powmill’s COTS challenge. As with everybody else, I am delighted that Boro surpassed my miserable prediction of 12 points some time ago, and despite a recent dip in form, most of us are very happy with our exciting and high-flying start to the season.

Defensively we remain pretty sound, in contrast to many a previous season. I have few worries about our defence, apart perhaps that some players are injury-prone. But we’re all a bit concerned that Boro are misfiring up front currently. We’ve managed just 12 goals from 9 games. This is understandable, perhaps, as new players settle down - and into a new life and league as far as Sène, Hansen and Strelec are concerned - and while the manager embeds his systems and works out his best eleven. Some of this drought is undoubtedly also due to the fact that we’re not creating chances:  - nobody in the midfield or at wing-back is yet supplying the ammunition we need to get through or behind the tight defences such as we met against Pompey, which is of greater concern. We all acknowledge that these  are worrying signs and we need the attack to click very soon, or we may need to lower our expectations for the season.

Who is going to provide the creativity, especially now Azaz has gone? Hackney can put pinpoint passes through a defence, but sometimes plays too far back. Hansen might be capable of it but we’ve yet to see him do so, and Nypan definitely has the talent but is still getting up to speed and has been a bit inconsistent so far. So, ultimately, a fit and firing McGree might be the answer; we know he can be very creative, so let’s hope that this time when he comes back he is much stronger and able to last many more games. We might see him on the bench against Ipswich, but I doubt he’ll start.

We have definitely lacked width of late. Len made the point on the Pompey thread that we signed Hansen as a winger, but at Portsmouth he played as an auxiliary striker/ attacking midfielder.  Perhaps we should try him at right wing? There was discussion on that thread too about Silvera and the width he offers; I’d be fine with that, occasionally, but NOT on the right - against Stoke he got into some good positions but let himself down with his crosses, all of which came from his weaker right foot. Then there’s Whittaker, but he always drifts inside onto his left foot rather than going round the full-back. Where are Ben Doak and Isaiah Jones when you need them?

The international break might have given Edwards the chance to do some intensive training on attacking moves, but Hansen, Sène, and Strelec have all been away with their national teams. The first two will play their final games on Tuesday night before returning. Kaly will return from Senegal and Sontje from far distant Curaçao. David appears to have the best chance of recovery by Friday as Slovakia have what should be an easy home game against Luxembourg on Monday. I’d definitely start with him, but we shall have to wait and see whether any of them will be deemed ready to start on Friday evening. Aidan Morris has also been on international duty; RE may decide to rest him initially with Alan Browne coming in to replace him.

Let’s hope the Tractor Boys come a cropper. If Boro score more than one, that will be a turnip for the book. But let’s make hay while the sun shines and soil their away record. Let’s send them home with their tails behind them, like Little Bo Peep‘s sheep! Let’s plant the seed for another bumper run of results.