“It was an absolutely shocking performance. I didn’t see it coming. I thought we took the lead against the run of play.” Those were the words of Ipswich Town boss Paul Cook after a humiliating defeat at the hands of Accrington Stanley yesterday. Once again, he saw this game through the eyes of the supporters. Town were absolutely woeful.
He also mentioned the difference between the two sides. The home side possessed what we so badly lacked, and that was “hunger and desire.” Against the run of play, we took the lead through Macauley Bonne, who along perhaps with Janoi Donacien, were the only players in a Town shirt who seemed to have both of these essential footballing qualities.
Sadly, too many of the same team that thrashed Doncaster Rovers on Tuesday, had a very bad day at the office. Why? Did complacency set in? It is hard to put your finger on what went wrong, but there is little doubt that just about everything did!
Club captain Sam Morsey described the display by Accrington as “disgusting,” and there is little doubt that the only way they were going to win here was by ruffling a few feathers, and playing every trick in the book to con the referee.
His scathing attack on the home team, perhaps summed up his frustrations when he spoke with Brenner Woolley after the match for BBC Radio Suffolk. “They’re a horrible team. They play like a non-league team and that’s no disrespect to them – that’s just the style and it works for them. We couldn’t get to grips with that in the second half after an ok first half. The way they play is disgusting – one of the players just kicked the ball out of the stadium which I’ve never seen before in my career.”
They time-wasted continually from the moment they took the lead, and made the game as scrappy as possible, by faining injuries and surrounding the referee whenever a dubious decision was given. These were largely trivial pursuits, but it worked in their favour, and we have to find a way of playing teams at their own game. Playing pretty football alone won’t do – not that we did an awful lot of that either!
They say, never change a winning team and in fairness, to Paul Cook, he didn’t. Cook summed up his feelings afterwards by highlighting succinctly our lowlights. “And you can debate tactics, formations and players but if you don’t win individual battles you won’t win a game, and we didn’t win many today on that pitch.”
