557: Kings of Anglia: Covering the Blues’ pre-season clash in Linz

0:00Ross Halls:Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Victory Lane? Yeah, it's even better with Chumba by my side. Race to chumbacasino.com. Let's Chumba! No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. CTNCs. 21+. Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

0:23Ross Halls:Hello everybody, it's me Roscoe and welcome to a very special Kings of Anglia Itchristown podcast sponsored by Stardust Spirit. Use the code K-A-W-A to get 20 % off your next order and if you're watching on video, the audio listeners out there, you'll be seeing us visually because we're in Austria, Northern Austria in Linz, a nice beach bar. And of course, I'm joined by good old Stuart Watson and Alex Jones. We've been here for four days, boys, in the lovely sunshine. We're here in this lovely beach bar. We had a few little moments, didn't we, Stuart? We were trying to figure out where we wanted to film, and this was the perfect spot.

0:59Ross Halls:But how are you, my friend? I'm very good, thank you, Ross. Yeah, this is day four of our Austrian tour, the morning after the night before with Ipswich playing, which we'll get onto in a moment. but to set the scene we're on the banks of the river Danube. We are a couple of hundred yards away from the stadium that we were at yesterday. We've got some cruise ships going past behind us on the river. You can see the Postlingberg church slash viewing platform that behind the scenes viewers will have seen us visit on day two of our behind the scenes diary. you're right when you think of day three okay I'm losing track it's been a long few days yeah when you think of Austria don't necessarily think of beaches landlocked I'll give you a quiz in a minute what do you want it now bordered by eight different countries Austria can you name them and also I hope you're doing well mate we've got our feet in the sand yeah which feels very nice indeed but uh yeah what do you reckon good question quiz master stew i'm not good at this this is not my forte so definitely i know to the north we've got czechia czech republic so we'll have that one oh it's right one one um they speak german here so we'll have germany onto there as well hungary yes okay so i've got three i've done two you need to do another one oh poland no no no no that's not yeah Belarus no Bulgaria no we're gonna stop now this has gone horribly wrong already um have we said Poland yeah I just said that I just said Poland um the thing is I know there's gonna be listeners right now or viewers who are just gonna be like screaming like knowing the answers and we're we are the worst people to ask about this we'll come back to this we'll come back to this Stu good question we'll have a little think because I'm sure lot of people listen to this to hear about the football because it's your town kicked off their proper pre-season of a 4-1 win against blue white linds no it's all week ross i know it's not blue blue blablablablablablablablablablablablablablabla so wait who'd the play blauweiss linds fc blauweiss Linz translates as blue white Linz so yeah we were at the ground last night kicked off 6pm local time 5pm back home in England should we get should we get into the action that's what people are tuning in for and listening in for to hear about what we made of Ipswiches first public pre-season friendly they'd played Peterborough at the training ground last Saturday lost that game 1-0, don't really know a great deal about who played in that or anything about it, because there was a bit of a media blackout, but yeah, we were at the ground yesterday along with, what do we reckon, estimate 100, 150 Ipswich fans, something like that, who we've been bumping into on and off over the last few days, enjoying themselves in Linz.

4:11Where do you want to start? Alex, do you want to kind of give us a summary of goals, overall verdict? Italy? Correct. Yes, good. Making some progress. Yeah, 4-1 win. Two different starting lineups. You should have got Italy, by the way, Ross. Two different lineups in the two halves. 4-2-3-1 in the first half and more of a 3-4-3 afterwards. First half was the George Hurst show a bit, wasn't it? Thought he was excellent. Got a couple of goals. Fairly early doors. First one a penalty after Jadon Filagene was fouled. the second one just that nice sweeping move back to front start to O'Shea played forward to Matasiwa to Smoddix literally just working their way through the entire Linz team in quite a central way and a nice finish from from George Hurst and then the slightly bizarre indirect free kick situation which I'm going to get Stu to explain later on yeah we had a bit of a breakdown from from Alex Palmer he tried to explain it but I didn't really understand it was all a little bit bit weird and then Ronivaldo the famous Ronivaldo scored from the indirect free kick and then after the break Linz didn't change their team so I think they started to tire and we had Town just take control basically a really nice header from Ali Alhamadi to get his goal and then Nathan Broadhead sending Leif Davis on his way lovely three ball down the left and a good finish from the left wing back in this situation.

5:484-1 win for Ipswich Town at the Hoffman Personal Stadion, which is for sponsorship reasons, I believe.

5:55Ross Halls:We'll discuss Linz and also the ground shortly, but let's talk about talking points then, Stu. Shall we start with George Hurst? Number nine on his back, bagged a brace. Good way to start pre-season. He looked sharp. He did look sharp, and forget what stage of pre-season it is. The strength to the opposition and I don't think it was a poor opposition by any stretch actually that was a competitive game I thought it was just the right level of opposition we spoke to a few locals here that sort of said oh Austrian Bundesliga it's you know it's not so good it's obviously not at the level of the championship certainly a team that's just dropped down from the Premier League a few pessimistic predictions from some Austrian football fans that we'd been speaking to but But they are further ahead in their preparations.

6:44I believe they start their season with a cup game next weekend. And I think they've played three pre-season games prior to this. They've beaten Fortuna Dusseldorf in one of them. So, yeah, they're no mugs, as Mick McCarthy would say. And, yeah, so I thought the first thing to say was it was an entertaining, competitive game. Had a little bit of bite to it. And you mentioned George Hurst. I thought he set the tone inside the first 30-odd seconds where he left a bit. dare I say in Liam De Lappe style on one of their centre halves didn't he a little bit late left him in an absolute heap so that set the tone got his two goals the first was a sent the goalkeeper the wrong way from the spot and the second was a kind of a classic George Hurst running off the last shoulder took it on the run nicely getting that number nine shirt and it looks like that's going to be the case because pretty much everyone wore their squad numbers from last season Hurst took the number nine which I look I was looking back through it uh who last had the number nine it went from um I think Caden Jackson to Joe Piggott to um remind me who had it after him Freddie Ledapo thank you uh and then Ipswich kind of left it vacant going into the start of last season because clearly they were keeping it back for a striker that never arrived that probably was being kept in mind for Armando Broglie or Latte Lath who they couldn't get done on deadline day that tells you everything about Liam DeLappe it was never someone flying past on a skateboard with some speakers you know Liam DeLappe wasn't signed to be the player that he was last summer he was given the number 19 shirt and ended up being the player he was so Julio Nciso took nine didn't he when he arrived in the January transfer window certainly didn't do it a disservice did he Julio but I like to call me old-fashioned but I like to see a proper out-and-out striker with a number nine on his back.

8:39For some it can weigh heavy that that number for others I think it's it's a real show of faith it's a confidence boost and I think in the case of George Hurst someone who had to sort of who's had some injury issues he had to watch from the sidelines last season I think that's that's going to really puff him up going into this season he's had his Scotland recognition recently he's had his new contract of course the new four-year contract now it looks like he's going to be given the number nine. Strip away the goals yesterday. I thought his 45-minute performance looked sharp. I thought he was making the ball stick.

9:13I thought his link play was good. So I'm excited to see what's loading for George Hurst going into this season.

9:20Ross Halls:Definitely my friend. AJ, I want to ask you about a new signing. Azor Matasiwa? No, he'll do it. Yeah? Happy with that? Thank you very much. Clip that up. Clip that up. But yeah, making his debut obviously not competitive debut but um what do you think the um 45 minutes start of the game 9 million euros could be a bit of rust there you know and you know as i said we've there were linds were pretty competitive and they were it was a bit scrappy first half wasn't it it was in a way i think that is natural especially from an ipswich perspective when this is a really early stage in pre-season isn't it and you're naturally trying to blast some of those cobwebs and you've got to factor in that i mean we're recording this on the sunday i think as all matter see where has been officially an ipswich player for a week now and the day after signing he flew out to austria to go have this training camp in windisch guards guards thing i gave it a go yeah came down for the training camp around an hour away um and that was kind of his first taste of it in at the deep end and you've got to factor in how difficult it is a to deal with things and kind of like you're getting to know teammates style he's never played in england before he's only ever played in the netherlands and in france um so there's that factor and also kind of going from having this time off getting your transfer done and then all of a sudden you're into a kieran mckenna training camp they're quite renowned i think for being a lot of hard work um so that can't have been the easiest of things.

10:54So having all of that and then coming into the game and you're trying to get used to a different style, it's naturally going to be harder. So let's kind of talk about the things that maybe there'll be room for improvement on. And I touched on this when I was looking at kind of a scouting report of him. He's going to be a Sam Morsey replacement and he's going to need to have a lot of touches on the ball, a lot of time on the ball. And there were times where sometimes the touch was too heavy or he was getting pressed too quickly that the one I think a lot of people will look at That will be when he lost possession of the ball in his own box when playing out from the back.

11:26Town didn't concede from that, but that is so often a phase of play when you have that midfield role dropping deep into the box, picking up the ball and going forward. So he needs to be able to get used to that, and I'm sure that he will. On the positive side, I thought we saw some really nice touches, some turns into space. I've said this before, but I really like the way he manipulates the space and he knows exactly where he can run into gaps. He knows when to play the passes. and we saw little glimpses of that. This is still early doors, but I liked what we saw. He's got the right physical profile.

11:55He's not a tall midfielder by any means, but he's a muscle. He's made of something, isn't he? And that's kind of what you want. And I think that essentially he's got the core characteristics of Sam Morsey there as well. And I think that he's almost looking to try and become a like-for-like replacement, just someone that maybe statistically, and in some aspects will be stronger and also, of course, he's five years younger as well.

12:23Ross Halls:Yeah, and we'll get on to Sam Morsey in a bit, Stu, because you're the man who broke a very big story in the week. First impressions on Azor? You actually spoke to Kieran McKenna about him and he's sort of been on the radar for a while. Obviously, Jens Giuste's sort of teammate back in the day. But yeah, first impressions on Azor? Yeah, that was the first thing Kieran referenced when asking, you know, how have you been watching a bit of French football given you've signed two players from France and he says well he's a former team mate of Jens Kuyusta so I would imagine he probably first came on their radar when they were looking at footage of Jens last summer and maybe kept tabs on him since.

12:59first impressions pretty much what Alex has just said rusty start to the game understandable there was another moment where he sort of played a pass into touch under under little pressure a couple of loose touches here and there but what I liked about him is that didn't sort of derail him he kept looking for the ball in tight areas he kept looking to progress the ball forwards whenever he could he had a role in in that second goal which was a really nice move so yeah all things considered i thought that was a an encouraging first glimpse of azor matasewa and and hopefully a lot more to come indeed and um yeah if you're watching or listening on audio

13:37Ross Halls:you can see us switching the mics across um it's working well um aj's getting attacked by a wasp which we found out today or this this tour you're not a fan of wasps no i hate them that yeah and the thing is i always get told oh especially by my mum and my grandma and they say oh you know what they're fine they're not going to harm you but a lot of people i think don't like wasps at all and i go right to the top of that list fair play um let's discuss a bit of the uh more about the first half of aj um anybody else that stood out from you um cam humphreys i really liked him this is the first time that we've seen him post wickham loan of course um he played a starring role in that Wickham team I think that when you look at their team from last year Richard Kona is the one that stands out when you're just going to look at it from the outside but when you talk to people that watch Wickham week in week out he was such a consistent performer and this was going to be the big moment for him because he needed to go out play regular football and prove that he was capable of being kind of a weekly star so and he's done that in a team that went on to finishing the playoffs did really well last year and now pre-season is going to be a big one for him what is the future going to be for Cameron Humphreys he's going to get a run out throughout pre-season regardless and then I think a decision will be made on what his role will be so these kind of games are crucial they're absolutely vital and I thought that he was really really good and I think he again played with a bit of a point to prove he'll know that a lot of what his next 12 months are going to look like could be kind of decided on what he shows in games like this and Aberdeen and Auxair and Charlton to come.

15:13And I really liked him. I just played in that slightly more advanced role. He's obviously played kind of left 10 at Wickham. This is going to be more of a deep-lying role, but he does have the licence to go forward, especially when you've got Matasiwa that's kind of scanning and roaming in behind and covering the back line. And just having that licence, yeah, to go forward and be able to thread passes, good on the ball, has a little bit of bite about him. Sometimes with young academy players, you can worry about the physical side and he has i think sometimes when i've watched him in previous years look quite kind of small to be honest um and i really liked his build here i thought that he handled the physical side of things really really well so impressed by him um trying to think if there's any others that that stood out to me necessarily i was going to go into um yeah

16:01Ross Halls:it's doing you know thoughts on this um sort of the the free behind the striker because um They were playing different roles. Jack Clark on the right, Jadon Filagene on the left, and then Sammy Smollocks through the middle, which is great to see him back from his injury. Of course, he came back late against West Ham, but yeah, three different sort of games. Firstly I'll just echo what Alex said about Cameron Humphries I thought he was one of, if not Ipswich's best performer in the first half He certainly can handle himself physically I think he's perfectly suited to this kind of left-sided deep eight role for Ipswich Town The sort of Jens Kjusta role from last season He's got a protector behind him So he can show the two sides of his game that he's developed He's played a fair bit of left-back, youth team level and first team level for Ipswich at times.

16:55So naturally, I think he can cover the gaps left by Leif Davis when he bombs forward. He's also developed, as Alex says, his attacking side of his game. Got some good numbers in terms of goals and assists playing that sort of left-sided 10 for Wickham last season. So ultimately landing in that left-sided central midfield role for Ipswich, I think is perfect for him. He's got the vision, he's got the technique, he's got the stamina, his physicality is improving. It all depends on what Ipswich do in the transfer market. I think they'll try and land at a real marquee signing there. Ipswich will go into this season as one of the promotion favourites under pressure to deliver.

17:38Would it be a risk for them to hang their hat on Jack Taylor, who hasn't started a lot of football for Ipswich? which have got some town fans walking past up the town. Jack Taylor, who has not started a huge amount of games for football for Ipswich over the last two seasons, and Cameron Humphries, who's still relatively inexperienced as well. I get the feeling they'll go for a fairly big-name signing there. And then do you need three of them competing for two positions? In that scenario, it probably is Cameron Humphries going out on another loan again because there is the 25-man squad wall. but I've said it for a little while I've been championing Cameron Humphries I think if he keeps performing like he did yesterday over these next few games he's going to give McKenna a real food for thought because they love him as a personality as much as a player and he could get in and he could stay and it's not impossible so we'll see on that front back to your original question apologies went off on a bit of a tangent there the three behind the striker yeah a bit of experimenting going on from Kieran McKenna yesterday trying some different things always difficult to read too much into this in pre-season because you're basically trying to find a way to get 22 plus players onto the pitch over the course of a game so sometimes you just have to put people out of position for needs must but I think there was definitely an element of let's have a little look see how they do in that position Jack Clark on the right long term is not something I don't think Ipswich will look at he's always been a left winger but they clearly wanted to have a little look at Jadon Filagene on the left.

19:11It's where I think he feels his best football has come for England, for Hull in the past. And we saw it with him winning the penalty. He loves to cut inside, drift inside really. He won the penalty doing that. He had another sort of couple of opportunities where he couldn't quite get his shot off. Not wholly sold on him still if I'm honest. He didn't hit the ground running, did he, after that January switch. then he had the injury. There was a moment in the second half, no, first half, obviously, because he played in the first half, where he sort of, you know, when he got injured at Chelsea and he did his knee and it was really a case of not committing to a challenge, he almost did exactly the same thing in this game, where he kind of went into a standing tackle but didn't fully commit to it and ended up sort of limping out of it.

19:58He needs to improve on that side of things. But yeah, Smoddix as a 10 is certainly something that I think Ipswich really need to look at because they're overstocked in that sort of inside left role now with Clark, with Broadhead, who will come on to, who had a really good second half, with Philogene potentially in the mix there as well. Sammy Smoddix is the sort of central number 10. Yeah, I know Alex had a little word with him after the game about that. That's obviously where he scored all his goals for Blackburn, wasn't it, when he was a championship golden boot winner?

20:32Ross Halls:Definitely, and we're going to keep that up our sleeves, AJ, because that's going to be a subs-exclusive story. But anything else from the first half? We'll get on to the ending in a minute. But anything else you want to mention from the first half? Elkhorn Baggett is huge. And I don't know whether I just forget this over the course because I've only ever seen Elkhorn Baggett in pre-seasons, really. I think the only other time that we've seen him play was that Fulham Cup game. He had the kind of Carabao Cup run. Yeah, he scored against Fulham. He had that kind of run of games then. And I think that when you're covering pre-season, the grounds are smaller and you're closer to the players.

21:09And this is one where I just looked at him. And you see it from the training videos as well. And you're just like, bloody hell, mate. I knew he was tall, but he's been in the gym as well. I guess he's had some time on the sidelines. Obviously, Steve Bruce has been telling him, get in the gym, mate, you're injured. Yeah, he took Cameron Burgess's number 15 shirt for these games. don't know whether that means anything about his role I'd still probably expect him to go out on loan but yeah I thought he was good in this one and he's just, he's big, he's a big old boy and spoiler alert, it's not the last time we're going to say that about a player on this podcast

21:47Ross Halls:Indeed, Stu, AJ, shall we talk about Linz's goal because we've got an indirect free kick again against Alex Palmer because who was against Arsenal? Wolves. Wolves, sorry. Yeah, Wolves. I think I actually said that on game day and someone actually made a comment on game day and said it was Wolves Ross and I've just completely forgot about that already. But yeah, Stu, let us know what happened. I thought after all the VAR nonsense of the Premier League, I might have a little run of not having to kind of have a section on the match verdict that didn't talk about referees. but unfortunately we had some shenanigans again yesterday, didn't we?

22:28The first was the application of the new rule, which I forgot about. It's been in play at the Club World Cup for the first time and it's in play from this season. And this is the eight-second rule with goalkeepers. So goalkeepers can't have the ball in hand for more than eight seconds. If they do, the opposition gets given a corner. Alex Palmer clearly forgot about that. We saw him in the mix zone afterwards. He said, well, we haven't had our meeting, our sort of pre-season meeting. A referee normally comes in and tells them about any new rules in play. And we haven't had that yet. So I'll be honest, it slipped my mind.

23:04So we saw that for the first time. I'm sure we're going to have some funner games with that this season. I'm convinced it won't be consistently applied. It will be kind of forgotten about in the first half. And then we'll get to stoppage times in games. And refs will give it sometimes and not in others. and I can hear the crowd sort of counting down from eight to zero in pantomime fashion. So we'll see how that is. And then we had the goal itself, which was right on half time. Alex Palmer makes a fairly standard save down low and it's kind of semi-parried, but he's kind of got it under control, but he hasn't, I haven't seen it back.

23:46And then he picks it up and the referee deems, there's a bit of confusion, he blows, he points is he given a penalty there? No, he's given an indirect free kick and yeah, he's basically deemed that Alex Palmer had the ball under control in his hands, he's dropped it and he's picked it up again which you're not allowed to do, so indirect free kick, 10 yards out, bang in the middle of the goal and for the second time as you say, in a matter of months, we've had this bizarre sight of all 11 Ipswich players lined from post to post trying to stop an indirect free kick was it Sam Morsi who charged out and made the block against Wolves didn't happen this time and the fabulously named Ronilvaldo Brazilian striker 36 years of age I think he's a bit of a cult hero here in Linz got tapped off to him and it was a cracking finish into the top corner from him so yeah that was an interesting moment

24:38Ross Halls:You saw your hero in the flesh AJ Ronilvaldo he's got a shirt at the airport mugs in the club shop of him just Brazilian in Austria they've got a few Brazilians haven't they? they do Anderson was the one who had the shot that led to it there's another couple they've had in the team Ron Ivaldo quite short big ears easy to spot they've got mugs in the club shop they've got his shirts everywhere oh we've lost the parasol ah well yeah we're going to stop for a second okay we're back yeah still had to get a rock and basically hammer the what you call it parasol because it fell down as you saw in video and if you're listening on audio make sure to subscribe because you wouldn't been able to see that great content that we provide the nonsense but back to the business stuff football AJ where were you just Ronnevaldo yeah yeah God we do stupid things sometimes Yeah, we like Ronnevaldo, he's cool, he has quite big ears, he's liked here.

25:48I didn't notice his ears to be honest. Stu didn't notice his ears, he has got quite big ears. Like his mug in the club shop, was going to buy that until I saw it was about 15 euros. I know this break, I feel like I'm breaking, shouldn't be saying this, Stu's probably going to do like this, but we broke a bit of press box etiquette by applauding him off the pitch as he went off in front of us. That was brilliant. I loved doing that. God bless you, Ron Avaldo. We've got Galatasaray fans that have shown up here. Look at this. They're playing tonight against... Who remembers... Admira, Flower Alarm Admira.

26:26They're here to play Galatasaray later. So there's a little bit of a fun fact drop in there.

26:30Ross Halls:Love that. Yeah, that was your first trip, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. It was a couple of weeks after I first started covering the club. So they're here to play Galatasaray. Their fans have just shown up at the bar. Yeah, we've seen a few of those. Shall we draw a line then, boys, on the first half? There's nothing else to mention. Second half, then, as we've said earlier, as pre-season is a standard, a whole different 11. First talk point, Stu, anything that sort of stood out from you? I would say the first thing to say was a slightly different formation in the second half. First half was the more traditional 4-2-3-1 with a bit of flex that we've normally seen from Kieran McKenna.

27:09It was Connor Townsend sort of bombing forward from left back. Ben Johnson was the kind of right back with the reins on, who didn't get forward as much, playing the sort of Axel Twenzebi role from last season. We mentioned the midfield, Mattassi was sitting, Humphreys getting forward a little bit more, talked about the make-up of the attack. Second half definitely had a more wing-backy feel to it. I know there's always a bit of nuance to this, and players move about in positions. But it definitely had more of a back three look to it. It was Cedric Kipre at the heart of that back three, flanked by Wolfenden to his right, Jacob Greaves to his left.

27:53And then we had Leif Davis and Harry Clark as the wingbacks. Harry Clark played really high. He was in that sort of Wes Burns wingback style role where he played right on the last shoulder on the far right, sort of that cheat out ball but then you know when Ipswich had to defend he'd tuck right back in as well so I would say that's the Wes Burns role that Harry Clark played bless you gesundheit yeah who else did we have so we then we had Finlay Barbrook young midfielder playing the sort of sitting role with Jack Taylor in that sort of more box-to-box role in midfield

28:28Ross Halls:Did you say Harry? Finlay. I've got my Barbrooks right, the twins. Finlay's still here. Harry is now at Chelmsford. Thank you. And then who do we have? We had Ali up front, Ali Alhamadi. And then two number 10s in behind in Connor Chaplin and Nathan Broadhead. So slightly different tactical look. Harry Clark in a slightly different position to what he's normally played. so yeah Kieran clearly looking at players in different positions looking at some different systems that he might need over the course of a long championship season so that would be the first talking point I'll let you boys talk about anyone that jumped off the page for you indeed and Ali Alhamadie who's now bald just shaved it all off part of the Stilt Watson Club he obviously scored which is good for a striker as we mentioned with George Hurst and a nice little headed finish.

29:23Ross Halls:And yeah, obviously was on loan at Stoke City last year. He's now come back. He's going to try to fight for his place. You know, thoughts on him? Yeah, can I touch on a couple of players here? Take two. So I think one of the goal scorers and one of the assisters are the way to go. Let's talk on Ali first, because you mentioned him. It's been a tough few weeks, months. He's obviously had that run in the Premier League, which came off the back of an injury. he's had to make a very quick step up from league two into the premier league and i i really i understand some of the criticisms that came his way but you i think it has to be it has to be a huge caveat with the jump up that he's made went out on loan to stoke where i think he was fine but you also then have to factor in that stoke last season were a poor team so the service that he had i think he scored twice it wasn't fantastic um and stoke fans i think quite liked him from what I saw um and he's had a few issues on international duties he was sent off uh recently for a high boot got some criticism for that and I think it's been quite a hard point he's someone that he is very focused on kind of himself and always being the best version he's a very confident player but sometimes I think these bits can get to him and you need to make sure that then you've got to be confident you've got to be feeling you've got to have the right kind of bounce and motivation and momentum is such a big thing in football and things like this will go really well he started the second half like a runaway steam train he looked like a man possessed he forced a really good save in the early stages after a bit of a dribble and then gets his goal comes from good work from Jack Taylor kind of making this weird surging run you don't really expect from Taylor taking it down the wing taking on this man looping cross Ali leaps highest really good jump gets good air on it it's a powerful header does a little little head thing there uh like that um so that's really good for him and i hope that this can be a pre-season where he builds i don't know what his role will be um there's obviously been rumors with with a departure but we'll see what what the future holds for him in in the short term um nathan broadhead i'll just quickly touch on him as well i think was probably my standout in in the second half i thought he was excellent and it's kind of like this free roaming role where yes he's a natural left sider but he goes where the ball is and he drifts and he becomes such a threat and he can also then drop deep which maybe you don't naturally expect of Nathan Broadhead but we add it here where he gets the assist for Leith Davis and it's such a fantastic ball it's like an outside of the boot pass he spots the run of Davis they obviously know each other incredibly well having played together for a number of years now calm finish um I just thought he was a bit of a menace a bit of a threat and I really like that again there's been some speculation with him so many left-sided options can it switch fit him into their squads he's a fan favorite and he's proving it again why another one where pre-season is going to be interesting to see what his kind of real spark and fire is going to be but the early suggestion is this is there and i've been really really impressed with him in this game so intrigued to see what the next few weeks bring for both here demands for Ali.

32:30Ross Halls:Indeed, and I'm nursing this beer, I'm sort of like, maybe, should we get some service, maybe? I don't know. But yes, love this, it's just lovely. I hope you've enjoyed listening so far, ladies and gentlemen. Still, I want to ask you about the other town signing, not David Button, he was there, doing the warm-ups, but Cedric Kipri? Kipri. Kipri. I'll get there in the end with that. Thoughts on his first game in a town shirt? Big boy! We've been talking about Alex said spoiler alert, there's a few big boys in this squad now and he might be the biggest of them all I think Cedric Kipre. He's an absolute unit, we could see it from the training pictures and video last week, certainly seeing him up close in person.

33:16he's certainly physically imposing we discussed is he more of a Burgess replacement than an Axel Twenzebi replacement he's played various different defensive roles at former clubs at Rems last season I keep getting Rems and Rens mixed up it's a bit confusing with the two new signings Rems, I did get it right first time and at West Brom previously too he ended up, as I've mentioned already playing at the heart of a back three. When we speak to people that know him best they say yes he is strong, yes he is committed but he can play as well and I think we saw some evidence of that. Brought the ball out from the back a few times which was nice.

34:00There was a moment that sticks in my mind as he made a sort of a lunging block to cut out a dangerous low cross into the box in the second half. Difficult to judge too much because Ipswich changed the whole team at half time, Linz didn't make any changes and Town were pretty dominant in that second half, so there wasn't loads of defending to do, but much like Matasiwa, I thought, an encouraging first 45 minutes for Kipre.

34:26Ross Halls:Indeed. We're not going to go through every player, and we're not going to go too much about the second half. Of course, Leif Davis, nice little finish, as AJ mentioned, but I want to talk about a man who made his return after a nine-month lay-off, Chio Ogbene, who also the fans love to see as well, and it was actually at the end, he was sort of doing a bit of a, I want to say fist pump but he was doing a bit of a celebration at the end with the town fans and he was signing different things but yeah it was part of the the kit launch and um just great to see him come on i think in the 75th minute or so just oh great to see yeah delighted to see Chio back it's been almost nine months since that achilles injury that he suffered against Brentford a freak injury and as soon as that happened and we saw his reaction getting stretched off we knew it was going to be the end of his season and it was pretty gutting because he was kind of in and out of the team in the early stages of the Premier League campaign but I had that feeling that he could make that right flank his own in the Premier League and for him to miss out and not be able to do that was a real blow and I think that Town, especially with their right-sided options, felt his absence last season.