Ipswich goals 'massively overlooked for analysis'

Another weekend without a victory leaves Ipswich Town in a slowly diminishing band of sides yet to score maximum points in a fixture so far this season.

And while the national media chose to focus on the goals against in their summings-up, our improvement in taking chances at the other end of the field was massively overlooked for analysis.

Ipswich cut their hosts open three times on Saturday, with lovely passing moves and incisive finishing much more akin to the previous campaigns under Kieran McKenna. And the goals included combinations of something old, something borrowed and something new to find the net for the Blues.

The decisive front-to-back move which released Sam Szmodics for the opener owed much to the vision of Kalvin Phillips and the skill of George Hirst in the build-up. The finish though showed that the former Blackburn man's eye for goal, especially around the edge of the penalty area, is not undiminished a level up.

Goal number two saw Conor Chaplin seize the initiative and unlock the Brentford defence in a manner seen up and down the EFL in previous seasons. Hirst's unerring dinked finish brought back memories of Marcus Stewart terrorising opposition goalkeepers back in 2000-01.

And Town's "like father like son" scoring exploits were not done there. Leif Davis' sweeping cross was expertly finished by Liam Delap to send the away end crazy - albeit only briefly.

When was the last time the sons of two ex-Premier League players scored in a Premier League fixture, by the way?!

So yes, it is understandable that national media focus on the negative metrics. But do they really tell a story that the league table does not already tell us? After the frustrating shut-out against Everton, surely the three goals scored deserve discussion too ahead of a massive fixture on Saturday?

Find more from Richard Woodward at the Blue Monday Podcast