Pre-match thoughts
At the beginning of the season, I wasn’t too optimistic about our second outing in the Premiership, the away clash at the Etihad. But City's poor run of results before Christmas has shown they are beatable, and Town’s steep learning curve, team cohesion, and sheer gutsy determination have improved their performances since then. Our Cap Morsy will be back to lead the charge, as Phillips is precluded from playing against his parent club.
City will no doubt be buoyed up by the signing of a new nine-and-a-half-year contract this week by the prolifically scoring Haaland (considered one of the best players in the world currently), which shows his commitment to the Club and theirs to him. More cynical thinkers see it as a sign to the ever-circling clubs from around the world, writ large with ‘Hands off, he’s ours!’
Let’s hope he proves he’s human today and not just a goal machine valued at millions.
As a lover of football, I confess I’m looking forward to watching England’s household names like Foden, Walker, Grealish, etc., in action, in the flesh, so to speak. But much more than that, I’m excited to be seeing our own new signing, finally across the line, in the form of Jaden Philogene. We met Ben Godfrey on Sunday at the FA cup match. I was impressed with his performance then.
In a pre-match press conference, with respect to Town’s team, Guardiola’s comments were sought and centred on the fact that DeLap came from City’s Academy. A good grounding, no doubt, but I’m sure Mckenna will have a big hand in shaping his future form.
Rumours abound about the alleged Premier League FFP breaches ‘case’ still looming against City, mainly from rivals hoping they will be ‘points penalised’. The latest news, however, appears to be that, according to reports only two days ago, their punishment, if found guilty, 'will not be more serious than a fine. This would make sense given their sudden massive spending spree on players and facilities.
City don’t have an imaginative nickname; their fans are known as Citizens or Cityzens.
For those who love stats, Ipswich vs Man City's head-to-head record over the last five games is:
Ipswich: 3 wins
Man City: 2 wins
Draws: 0
Match predictions are on the scale of a 71% likelihood of a City win. But no one predicted they would be 12 points behind the League leaders at this stage in the competition at the time of writing.
I’m hoping for a David and Goliath banana skin victory for Town. Antoine, on the train, was not feeling so optimistic.
At the stadium
This fixture was dedicated to Club charity partner Suffolk Mind, with various elements of the matchday in place to showcase the work that is done locally by this mental health charity.
A minute’s silence was called for to commemorate the death this week of Denis Law, a true legend of the game. As the city fans sang instead, we all elected to clap. RIP Denis.
First half
For the first half an hour or so, Town were holding their own and we had a near miss from a free kick by Davis just outside the area, seeing Hutchinson’s following shot deflected just over the bar. DeLap also had a powerful shot saved by Ederson.
Walton saved what looked to be a Haaland sitter. Things seemed to be going our way.
Phil Foden then disabused us of that notion with a 27th-minute goal to set City on their way, the end product of a Doku and de Bruyne collaboration down the right-hand side. This pairing proved practically unbeatable for the rest of the game. Foden set up Kovacic less than 3 minutes later for City’s second to go up on the scoreboard.
City stepped up a gear and our control of the game started slipping away. From then onwards all we could do was chase. Foden then added another goal in the 42nd minute to send his side 3-0 up at the break. Ironically, he is my favourite national team player.
Half time
The consensus was that we would not be coming back from this – just hopefully continuing damage limitation and possibly putting a goal of our own on the board. Something to cheer about.
Second half
More of the same, unfortunately.
Doku netted the fourth with a shot that beat Walton through a deflection off O’Shea and set up Erling Haaland to score their fifth from a Clarke cross-field ball.
Their sixth goal came when substitute James McAtee was home free to net a clever looping header in the 69th minute.
From there, we managed to hang on.
Ipswich Town 0-6 Manchester City
Men of the Match
Ben Johnson was sterling in defence and was denied a goal by a big save from Ederson. Morsy was solid, too.
Philogene, or Jaden as he likes to be known, came on as a sub but looked ‘tricksy’ in the short time he played. I'm looking forward to seeing more of him.
Man of the Match: Kevin de Bruyne
Round up
So, no banana skins and no David and Goliath.
Quite simply, we lost to a skilful team and a consummate performance. I would certainly have applauded and enjoyed their style if we hadn't been their opponents. Instead, it was reluctant admiration.
The only negative comment I’ve seen about City so far was a quote from The Standard: “Certainly a statement of intent from Man City, though the vast gulf in resources perhaps makes it difficult to suggest they’re fully back just yet”.
Playing as they were tonight, I suggest they would have bested most teams in the league. They are not four times League champions for nothing!
It was the first time I had seen Haaland ‘live’, and it was easy to comprehend just how good he is, with his sudden fast loping runs through defenders to appear in front of the goal. His obviously instinctive reading of the game, as much as his scoring ability, earned my respect.
To put this game into perspective, at the beginning of the season, the realists amongst us expected and feared that results like this would come our way. It is more of a shock because we have been performing so much better than everyone predicted, showing the spirited handling of strong teams on occasion. The pundits have long said we are ‘punching above our weight’. Cruelly, against tonight’s opponents, they were right, and it showed—another lesson to be learned.
Thoughts
I wish Broadhead had been playing, not unused on the bench. Chatting to Adam Howard and Lyndsey on the way out, he agreed. (I thought Adam was channelling his inner Ed Sheeran, but apparently, the orange rib around his beanie hat wasn’t a deliberate choice).
I wish subs had been brought on earlier.
I was very proud of our supporters who made themselves heard throughout the whole match and were even cheerily singing “Six nil…six nil” in self-deprecation. The ‘Tractor Boys’ are good at reverse psychology. It’s their field – no pun intended.
I am also extremely proud of those who stayed at the end of the game to clap and cheer the team, to keep the Ipswich ‘spirit’ alive.
View from the train
There was, of course, just the sense of being beaten by a better team. There was no talk or upset over bad tackles, bad refereeing decisions (he had very little to do), VAR, timewasting, player histrionics or even plain bad luck – it was just a good, clean game that we lost. I felt much worse over the loss on Thursday night, which had all of the above annoyances.
Hopefully, we can move on from this with some confidence intact to fight again. It's a little unfortunate that our next game is at Anfield.
