Or is it?
This should be dead easy. Ipswich are second bottom in the league and have gained a solitary point from their last 18. Even that was six games ago, meaning they’ve lost the last five games on the trot. Easy and this should be a gift of three points for us.
Except we very rarely do easy, do we? We couldn’t even beat Ipswich last time we played them, after all.
We should give ourselves every chance in this game if we manage to not let them score early, as most other teams manage to do . How nice was it for us to get an early goal against Spurs? Do the same today and it’ll be game over, I would think.
Squad news and foremost is that Ollie Watkins and Tyrone Mings are both in contention. Mings, as much as I’m not his biggest fan, is at least a proper defender and is sorely needed with the injury position we’re in. More good news is that our new loan signing, Axel Disasi is available after being cup-tied against Spurs. He’s only played six games this season, but even so, I’d expect him to come straight into the team. Mind you, we all know Unai isn’t afraid to play square pegs in round holes, so you never know. He may decide that Disasi isn’t ready. Given that Ipswich don’t score many, it wouldn’t surprise me.
On the downside, Ezri Konsa, Pau Torres, Matty Cash, Amadou Onana and Ross Barkley are all still out, with no updates on how they’re progressing.
As for Ipswich, Sammie Szmodics will be assessed after he had a setback with an ankle injury last week. Conor Chaplin, Christian Walton, Wes Burns and Chiedozie Ogbene are all out but goalkeeper Alex Palmer, who made his debut last weekend after joining from West Brom, could play his first Premier League game.
For the stattos amongst us, here’s a couple; Ipwich have only beaten us once in our last 14 meetings and they’ve only beaten us twice at Villa park in the last 44 years. Everything seems to be in our favour, doesn’t it? Which, knowing us, makes it scary.
Prediction time then and I simply cannot see us losing this one. Indeed, I think we should get a few goals today. That said, there’s another stat we’re probably vaguely aware of. We’ve only kept one clean sheet in our last 14 games.
So any score is invariably going to end in a -1
And I’m going for 3-1. I could easily see it being a bigger victory if we manage to motivate ourselves, but I see the lads subconciously taking it easy and the tractor boys giving us a tough time.
UTV!
Comments
198 responses to “Villa – Ipswich; A shoe-in, yes?”
I’m quite looking forward to seeing Disasi.
A clean sheet would be nice Badger, and as for Mings I’d be a lot more comfortable with him marshalling our defence, well I’m not predicting as bad for my health and I get pissed off getting it wrong yes I like to see our new lads playing. UTV.
Comparing Ipswich at home to Ipswich away, in my opinion, is an unfair judgement, simply because it is so difficult to play away against any PL opposition or any opposition in England to be honest, no matter who you are. (e.g look at what the Blues, to their credit, did last week, leyton orient, plymouth etc.
So these are completely different games.
I will get the negativity out the way and say we will definitely concede and it will more than likely be Liam Delap putting us down, probably before I’ve got in the stadium.
But I can see us winning today, maybe 2-1 or 3-1 but it wouldn”t shock me if we slip up, again. But I can see the new signings making an impact, and I am, like you, looking forward to seeing Disasi.
If we don’t win here I can’t see how we’re going to finish in the top 5. Will be reactionary but we should turn focus to FA Cup and Champions League. Anyways, hopefully we don’t have to worry about that, I will be leaving soon en route to VP as usual! UTV 🙂
Hey, Alfie has something positive to say!
We must be in with a chance 🙂
Haha.
Because I’m too scared to write on her what I texted you, which, say quitely, was 1-1.
I hate Ed Sheeran. Does that help the dabate any?
4-0.
…debate any…(Can we have an edit function)?
I like his music, he’ll probably find a way past our defence with his musical notes, albeit a pluck of a guitar string would probably see us sticking our arms in the air for an invisible offside 🙂
*cough cough* Ezri Konsa!
Can you all stop being a Bet Fred Please I know we all would like to win then again it’s football and get prats like Oliver and Dean were f”£k . I’m worried as it is that we are not where we should be, today’s game is a must for us but should we not forget CL .
any news yet on the team? . UTF
Routine win today. What are you all worried about?
E. Martínez
L. Digne
B. Kamara
A. Disasi
Andrés García
Y. Tielemans
J. McGinn (c), Captain
J. Ramsey
M. Rogers
D. Malen
O. Watkins
Substitutes
Marco Asensio
L. Bogarde
J. Jimoh-Aloba
I. Maatsen
T. Mings
R. Olsen
M. Rashford
O. Zych
No Bailey even on the bench?
Devastating news 😏
This is a must win game if we want 4th / 5th. Pool and Chelsea to follow us a tough run.
Disasi needs to be up and running from the start and I’m sure Ipswich will identify this as our weak link.
A positive start like last week is needed with more ruthless finishing.
I think we will win 2-1 because we are almost certain to concede.
4-1
Clear handball outside the box and no VAR check. Let normal service resume.
What’s wrong with Kamara?
4-1 who said that? Be lucky we win this from what I’m seeing. no urgency in this game up till now.
Have faith Bill. Goals will come
A half to forget. We need Asensio to offer the skills to beat a low block. Maybe take Watkins off and switch Malen to CF.
Well, 45 minutes gone and 0-0 against 10 men, watching this game we have lost the flow of passing and positional play no urgency no aggression, we are going to win 5-0
and a few flying pigs on the ground.
I have just been binge-watching Peaky Blinders. Strange isn’t it, back then people in Birmingham could shoot straight. This afternoon that has been our obvious failing. More practice please.
0-1. Forget Champions League next season! Too slow again.
Nanny McPhee and his set pieces are W*”k.
No bullshit from that free kick and look what happens.
Fuckin rubbish again just can’t get our league season going absolutely awful
too much tip tap and not going forward is the problem, there you go a goal from a free kick tells us to get up the field. nearly had another from the new player. we got to go forward.
Sorry Badger but Chesty just don’t do it for me, too often totally ineffective and gives the ball away in dangerous positions just far too often.
A draw against a shite team with 10 men just not happening in the league not good enough
Exactly as I called it… 1-1.
Pathetic against a 10 man relegation team and after a week without a midweek game. Until we can keep a clean sheet we won’t have a chance of winning anything. Totally agree about the comment on MacPhee. Send him on a one way ticket to Portugal and get someone in who can convert one of the 16 corners we had today.
As Bill P pointed out too tiki taki, they down to ten men FFS!
Speed it up and get at them not play Infront of them and Chesty? Don’t get me started. Can someone explain to me why he was on that pitch and Ramsey wasn’t?
Managers and favourites?
Because Ramsey can’t play 3 big games in a week, RSS. Nobody can. Nor should they.
I’d play Ramsey all day and everyday over Chesty BFR. I except your rational but he protects the ball so much better than Rogers (who doesn’t?) and offers IMO as much going forward.
Yep, our corners were pisspoor today. Probably only Rashford’s bad point, as otherwise, he worked really hard and is obviously up for it.
Jesus H Christ. Yet another team on a terrible run and we give them a point. At home.
DsVilla, “Routine win today. What are you all worried about?”
That’s come back to bite you on the arse 🙂
I nearly give up, I swear. How can we not beat such a crap team, down to 10 men?
I’d swear we’re jinxed.
It runs through Villa fans’ veins now. Almost expecting a crap result.
We’ve blown CL and will be lucky to qualify for Europe at all, imo.
As I continuously say, it doesn’t matter a toss how we do in the CL this year, winning it apart and that isn’t going to happen. Qually is way more imprtant.
Disastrous is the only word and I’m fucking fuming. Again.
I like to take a risk Hitch. Disappointing result but not the first or last time. We haven’t scored enough goals this season. We also struggle to keep a clean sheet. Not a great recipe all round but we are still light years ahead of where we were a couple of years ago.
For every happy football fan there’s an unhappy one. Ipswich fans will be bigging up their team which is good for them in a season with not many positives.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone and don’t let Villa spoil it for you
DS – no problem with being positive – sadly I’m the opposite.
The focus has been on defence but, the real problem lies up front. We have scored 16 fewer goals than last season – Luiz, Diaby and Bailey’s contributions all missing.
Today was another instance – despite Parker’s heroics – of a failure to put the ball in the net. We’re too passive.
With Ipswich down to 10 men we should just have overloaded the box. All this tippy, tappy football a La Citeh is OK but we should have just loaded balks into their box and created panic and havoc. The more we played in front of their defence, the more comfortable they were.
Last point, time for our set piece coach to move on.
I thought we were pretty good overall but failed to stretch them to create space. Infuriatingly their goalie played an effing blinder.
We brought players in to help us get past the ‘low block’/’parking the bus’. Again it just didn’t happen. I’m at a loss.
Don’t know what to suggest with most of our preferred back 4 out of action.
Tony Cascarino, Cascarino in the air, makes a good point about injuries and that it’s simply down to high level sportsmen playing too many games at breakneck speed. And FIFA just invent more and bigger competitions…£££££££££££$££££££…
How you have to pity those multimillionaire yet grossly overworked professional athletes?
It must be hell.
It’s zero to do with what they’re paid. They are so toned they are much more physically vulnerable than players of old.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in a f£&*ing foul mood over this result…
Mate, as s a young man I’d have given my right arm to play 3 matches a week and train every day instead of working 80 hours a week.
They’ll get no sympathy from me. As far as I’m concerned they’re blessed.
And yea we played great against a team third from bottom with a goal difference of minus 27 and down to ten men.
A Stirling performance.