EFLC (R2) - AFC Wimbledon vs Ipswich Town Preview & Matchday Thread

[Mauswara]

Thought we had plenty of quality on the field today but it wasn't a team. It'll come.

[Cabanas Blue]

Well that's a big confidence
boost for Saturday I'm so disappointed

[Blue Wilf]

I am genuinely not bothered. Awful competition and we never put out a coherent side (no wonder given half of them have been here less than 2 weeks). Move on - it won't define our season. Agree we need a striker though

[ITFC2024]

We’re in the process of rebuilding our team; the ultimate goal is Premier League survival. It’s a tough loss, but it will be one less distraction and possibility of losing players to injury. Of course the pundits are having a laugh…”How on earth can a Premier League team lose to a League Two team!”. Judge us at the end of the season! If we survive this result won’t matter. We’ve experienced a lot of highs in the last two years, and we’ll have to tolerate the lows for now. I hate the League Cup anyway, just another unnecessary money maker for television and sponsors.

Good to see Ali & Chappers get goals. A win on Saturday against Fulham will be brilliant, but I’ll take a draw. The rebuilding process and integration of new players will take time. As long as we survive, the kids will be alright.

[arana peligrosa]

It's a cup tie and adverse score involving ourselves against lower league opposition for fucks sake, it's disappointing but there's really nothing new here. Time and again it happens, always the f**king same. It's frustrating, it's unfortunate, even embarrassing, but it's occurred to us so many times now you're just essentially reading from the same page time and time again.

We were never going to win the damn thing although extra progression would have added morale to the early season. Caught game highlights, we put out a suitable team, we should have had enough there to have got past them. Unfortunately and not for the first time or last we underperformed or didn't measure up to it and got caught out by a needless elimination. It's regrettable and largely disappointing, but in no way surprising.

Once they chalked off extra time and went straight to penalty you kind of felt this isn't a competition really worth bothering about. Just about sick or tired of our inability to finish off lower league opponents in cup games long before now. When it comes to January we'll go out first opportunity in the F.A Cup when drawing similar caliber of opponents. Not so much a criticism, or maybe it is, the fact remains we just don't win games of this nature.

Esto es mierda, nada mas. He visto bastante para hoy. Estoy demasiado cansado para ir mas lejos.

[QldBlue]

This just highlights the obvious truth that you can’t just chuck a bunch of talented players together and expect instant results. I think it’ll be weeks before we start to get an idea of what this squad is capable of, if not longer, and I think it’ll be tough to pick up points in that period. But I don’t see how it could be any other way. We were promoted at least one season earlier than planned/expected and there’s just no way in hell most of our existing squad was going to cut it. The sheer number of new signings is just a symptom of that. But even so, we’ve signed some excellent players and I’m optimistic.. just have to shrug these early weeks off. The only fly in the soup for me is whether KM can get Phillips performing to his abilities.

[Bluemike]

Well having slept on it I have to say my disappointment has subsided, just a little bit though. As others have said you can't just throw eleven players together at any level and expect instant results, it just won't happen. For what it's worth there were a couple of positives to take from last night, for me Jens Cajuste looked very good and will be a real asset for sure while Jack Clarke showed in glimpses exactly why he is regarded as such an exciting player to watch, once in full flow he too will prove to be a fab addition. I also thought for the opening Twenty Minutes Ogbene looked bright despite only arriving hours before, Connor Townsend was steady if unspectacular as was Johnson.

The Two concerns for me were O'Shea & Kalvin Phillips, both looked very poor on the night, admittedly O'Shea and Cameron Burgess are never going to be our CB pairing and to be frank I would be happy to see Burgess move on, the defending, or lack of it for their goals was woeful and the Two CB's were at fault. Phillips was for me the worst Town player on the pitch, just offered very little and looked lost, I mean this is a league Two side on your debut with the world watching, what more incentive do you need to get your Town career up and running ? For me he is not just a yard off the pace, more like Months off it as it stands.

Yes we had loads of possession and bossed a lot of the game but Two fundamental requirements were lacking, we can't defend and we created nothing apart from the Two goals, that combination is a recipe for disaster, especially against premier league sides. If the Wimbledon keeper had not been on the pitch for the Ninety Minutes we'd still have only scored Two because nothing else was close to being on target while at the back they put Two good deliveries into our box and scored them both, pretty pathetic really.

I have always admired KM's honesty but come on Kieran, those comments last night were a tad embarrassing, "not too much wrong with the performance" ?? Really ?? How about no cutting edge against a league Two side, defenders who can't defend ? your big signing looking like he belongs at Stranraer or somewhere ? I would say there was quite a bit wrong with it although we have to accept that team had literally been thrown together.

A win was needed for a confidence boost, we haven't got that now which makes Saturday's game even more difficult than it already was and we really need to get ourselves up and running with something on the board, and by then we definitely need another top striker. Over to you Mark Ashton.

[The Odious Mr Rossi]

Well I did say father up this thread that I was concerned what might happen if we made wholesale changes.
A win was so important to gain some moral/momentum following 2 league defeats.
What we got instead was s total embarrassment.
I think KM got it totally wrong, far too many changes. For example, on paper our best central defensive pairing is probably Greaves and O'Shea, who have not played together before. This game was a perfect opportunity to play them together in order to gel a bit, it totally baffles me why this did not happen.
KM worrines me by saying we didn't do too much wrong - 2nd half performance was woeful.
Only bright marks for me was Cajuste and Clarke - oh, and Delap's penalty was class.

[Ricco]

KM worrines me by saying we didn't do too much wrong - 2nd half performance was woeful.

I'm sure different things would be said in the dressing room, I guess there's not much reason for him to criticise the team publicly, considering the competition and the amount of new players.

It's not great, but it's not a typical game of football and it happens. Yes conceding to set pieces is frustrating, but Burgess is rusty, may have had a push in the back for the first and hands on his shoulders for the second, he simply won't be in our first team much this season anyway. Not sure who he was bollocking after the second goal?!!

[Shed on tour]

KM worrines me by saying we didn't do too much wrong - 2nd half performance was woeful.

I'm sure different things would be said in the dressing room, I guess there's not much reason for him to criticise the team publicly, considering the competition and the amount of new players.

It's not great, but it's not a typical game of football and it happens. Yes conceding to set pieces is frustrating, but Burgess is rusty, may have had a push in the back for the first and hands on his shoulders for the second, he simply won't be in our first team much this season anyway. Not sure who he was bollocking after the second goal?!!

All I can say is when McKenna came over to the fans after the game his facial expression certainly didn’t match his after match comments. He looked like he was absolutely fuming. As you say it was probably a case of not wanting to criticise the team in public.
As for the game itself can’t add any more than has already been said.If you don’t defend set pieces properly then you will be punished at any level. Another concern for me is even in the first half when we were dominating possession we still didn’t test their keeper that much.
On to the Fulham game and despite it being early in the season we could really do with getting something out of it just to make sure that the confidence level doesn’t continue to drop, especially as we have 2 away games on the trot after the international break.

[Bluemike]

Conor Chaplin gave a far better after match interview, "we have to make sure it doesn't happen again"
Absolutely spot on and honest.

[shabba]

You’ve said it all already so won’t cover the same ground.

I thought we passed it around nicely but lacked end product, other than his goal Al-Hamadi was quiet.

One thing I really noticed was how Johnson was Inverting - he was playing in midfield half the time, he was on the ball a lot!
Obenge the new winger just seem welded to the top corner of the pitch, forgot he was playing on occasions - maybe it was instructions but he just seemed to sit very high up the pitch out wide and never drop into other areas.

Clarke was lively and can carry the ball well.