Match report by Old Git.
Another comfortable victory by unbeaten Ipswich Town, at Fortress Portman Road, with two well crafted first half goals, the first from Tommy "Best Midfielder In The Nationwide" Miller, the second, a Martijn Reuser screamer. Tottenham were never in the match.
Don't you wish I was writing about the Premiership?
Let's remind ourselves that ITFC is a great institution, the footballing equivalent of the Queen Mother. If we go down, we go down with dignity, with the orchestra still playing. The Titanic strategy. We showed it in Milan, where there were no arrests but, better than that, no 'incidents' at all. Good for ITFC, good for Engeland.
Perhaps we should swap the Reserve team for the first team. To an extent, we have done that : Sixto Peralta has displaced Jim Magilton, Jamie Clapham is back, Fabian Wilnis is now an 'official' reserve. I emailed him, yesterday, at his website, to say that I would be rooting for him tonight, after his banishment. I received a very pompous reply by some sort of webmaster automaton, like getting a letter from 'the desk of Mr Fabian Wilnis', thanking me for my interest and would I like to buy some pills? What?
Perhaps we should go the whole hog, and play the Yoofs in the Premiership, though I don't want them to become infected with the first team's despondency. Darren Bent has been corrupted. He was nothing much, tonight, ready to turn and lay balls off instead of being his simple, direct, deadly self. Whenever I watch him, he scores. Not tonight. Hasn't Sixto gone the same way ?
Our team was :
Marshall, Wilnis, Gaardsøe, Justin Miller (c), Croftie, Darren Ambrose, Tommy Miller, Magilton, Reuser, Bent, Pablo Gonzalez Couñago
For them? That you'd know? Kasey Keller in goal; my man of the match.
Alton Thelwell, at centre-back, a Sol Campbell clone, eventually booked for knocking Pablo about all match...Oyvind Leonhardsen? I kept trying to notice him, but he was unwatchable...their other people were called, just for the record: Kelly, Herron, Henry, Toner, Consorti, Ferguson, Piercy and Kamanan.
It was a mild night, averaging 9 degrees centigrade, in a small breeze. I felt so at home. In that San Siro, I watched the match through a red wire cage, as if I was a lion. I used to be. Now, I'm a toothless old pussycat. But so was the team, wasn't it? Naylor thought he did himself proud. Eh? ...No, let's move on.
Tonight's match ignited around the half-hour mark. Before then, we had seen some great work from balding Kasey Keller, in the Tottingham goal, firstly in the 13th minute, saving Reuser's freekick, after the first foul of the evening on Couñago--it's what he lives for, like Bobby Petta--Bent headed wide, left, after the rebound.
Keller wasn't needed, 2 mins later, when Reuser feinted left then shot, with his right foot, past the left post. (Lots of lefts and rights, isn't there? You don't have to follow all that, if you don't want.) Bent volleyed, right, a flick through from Tommy Miller.
Then our all-out assault began, quietly to start, with lovely Yoof Darren Ambrose putting in an inoffensive shot. Half a dozen Yoofs were on the bench. They're getting closer, but have they overtaken my little mate, Abbadabba? I noticed, this am, that someone called Derek Davis had written him off, in a terrestial publication. Say it isn't true. His legs will grow.
Dead on the half hour, there was a nice move down the middle: Couñago, Miller, Bent, followed by a complicated corner that fizzled out with a wide Reuser header...then, two great Keller saves: from Tommy Miller, then a double from Couñago and Bent.
And then.... Miller took a short pass from the infuriatingly uninterestingly coiffeured Reuser, took a short pace and scooped the ball beyond Keller's left paw and just inside the right upright. 1-0. Good time to score. Isn't it always?
40: another purposeful attack with a controlled Gaardsøe at the heart of it but an uncontrolled Ambrose shot. Never mind. Good football.
41: the Reuser screamer, from the edge of the penalty area, right of centre. 2-0. Well on top. Never looked back. Spurs had a little toy shot almost immediately afterwards but this really was a reserve team, not the sort of 'reserve' team that the big clubs putting out to thump our first team.
HALF TIME: IPSWICH TOWN RESERVES 2 TOTTINGHAM RESERVES 0
Playing in the reserve team, for the club adrift at the bottom of the Premiership holds no shame for Darrens Bent and Ambrose, nor for the tidal wave of Yoofs that is lapping onward and upward.... and, sadly, offward. I've waited 20 years for Town to return to the days of hand-rearing good yoofs but it has turned sour: Dyer, Wright and Scowcroft have all turned out not to have Blue blood. No, I'm not listening to why they 'had' to go. Is our excellent Yoof team just a portfolio of commodity 'positions', to trade as and when? Brazil, Wark, Burley--to name just the Scottish contingent of that Youth Cup winning team of long, long ago (or virtually yesterday, as I think of it)--they would not have wished to be traded away without a fight, and that was in an age when players were treated as chattels. Whatever chattels were. You don't get chattels now; at least, not like you used to.
Sorry, back to the match.
Wait a minute. We did sell all those players, in the end. What is this oldgit talking about?
The second half was all about tiny but talented Matthew Bloomfield. Bloomfield--whose brother has realised his rather bizarre dream, by being on the books of Norwich City--replaced the man who has twice been North Ireland's Sportsman Of The Year. Tonight, Bloomfield would have won the award. Magic's magic twinkled brightly for the first few minutes--I thought we were going to see a Magic Masterclass, but he was wearing the Richard Logan Memorial Shorts and quickly ran out of puff. Apparently, Logan was told, by Burley, that yoga was the answer to 'Log's lack of fitness. Sadly, little Dickie misheard--it's easy to do, with Burley--and Log sucked up a barrel of yoghurt, gaining four stone and having to be sent as far away as it is possible to go in England without being not in England. Surely, his natural destination would have been Canvey Island, whose star, Neil 'House Husband' Gregory, was pictured in this morning's Anglian, pictured across more than one page, as he is now 29 stone. (Or was that supposed to be 29 years old?) Logan's gorgeous mulatto stick insect totty, whose name is something stupid, like Beryl, will have to dump him, as she is Premiership Reserve totty.
Tottenham had the worst Spurs Number 9 I have ever seen, Steven Ferguson, who had the goal to himself, just after half-time, but wafted his shot wide. He was subbed on the hour. At the same time, 'Pablo' had a well directed top corner shot tipped over for a corner on the right by the deft Keller. Andy Marshall had nowt to do but yet looked dodgy because of poor kicking.
Pablo spent the whole match fouling, being fouled, or failing. He is a powder puff, a Mich D'Avray impersonator, who was replaced after 70 minutes by hat-trick hero Steve Burton, who made no impression whatsover.
But Bloomfield kept on doing so. He played directly behind Tommy Miller, i.e. in front of Justin Miller, but by several audacious bits of skill and enthusiasm, he kept finding himself in all the best action. Do you see Matt Holland doing all that? Sorry, but he has dematterialised.
The match dribbled away into substitutions, but I had enjoyed it more than the Milanese experience. The San Siro is big and featureless, like Norfolk, as I have written in my report that will be published in the next edition of Those Were The Days, in which you will also read of my Big Fight with Mrs OldGit. She tried to make it up, today, but I wasn't having any of it. She and Finidi George spoiled my Italian Job. I won't forgive either of them THAT easily.
Crowd : they didn't say. I counted 1,833.
The ref was Mr Woodward, Mr Callan.
The linesmen were Tyne and Wear. ( Oh, Tyne and Yeo, then. )
I wasn't too cold tonight, thank you.
Good Night.
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