[andyd]

Originally Posted by Exile on Spencer St

Presume you meant to write “booting it to no one”, Cashy. There was a lot of that from Stanley as their defending got more and more desperate as the game progressed.
I noticed two things yesterday. The first happened, but less effectively, with Burton and Exeter, and was that Ipswich pressed Stanley in their own defensive half whilst their own defenders held an extremely high line, sometimes just a few yards into their own half.
Stanley had Matt Lowe chasing on his own to close down Ipswich defenders, but mainly Stanley stood off and didn’t seem to ‘engage’ until they got near or past the half way line.
Consequently, Ipswich constantly used their keeper as a sweeper to keep the ball away from any marauding Stanley forward before passing it to their midfield further up the field.
At the same time, Stanley always seemed to want to play out from the back and rarely put a ball through into space for a winger to run onto. This was typified by McConville, who was invariably running back towards his own goal to receive a pass from his defence. He’s not the only one who does it, but there were lots of times when a quick ball behind the Ipswich defence, into the acres of space that they left, might have created something.
Of course, that supposes Stanley have a winger fast enough to latch onto those through balls and one or more attackers to get into the box to make something of the cross. Josh Woods seemed to be one of the few on the pitch yesterday that had the necessary pace. Pritchard used to, but he’s clearly still not back to his best.
Perhaps other teams have also twigged this, and crowd the game into Stanley’s half knowing they don’t have to worry too much about getting caught out by a through ball behind their defence.

I noticed first half Liegh and Hamilton who play in the forward midfield thus being the men to press the opposition played to deep resulting in Coyle who was excellent again having constant pressure put on him. Think at half time Coleman must have had a word because they both played further no coincidence we then had our best spell and maybe could or should have scored, but ultimately their class showed and they deserved the win although their second goal had a lot of luck spraying down on it and it killed any comeback hopes off, seriously getting short of options upfront with injuries will Hardy get a chance.