And so it comes down to this, Ipswich town at home. Win this and we take the race for automatic promotion down at the last day, anything else and it’s all done and the game of against Preston just becomes about where we finish in the play-off positions. Ipswich are in a situation where if they win at St Mary’s, then they are up, barring a ridiculous swing in goal difference on the final day, where, Ipswich are at home to Queens Park on the fucking beach and completely unreliable Rangers.

Even if we win today, we will be relying on relegated Oxford getting a point at Millwall as well as QPR getting appointed at Ipswich. Middlesbrough are in the mix as well but they have an on paper, difficult game away against Wrexham. So, as is always the case, none of it matters unless we win both of our remaining games.

This starts tonight of course. I have heard one commentator so far saying that Saints will be tired and hung over and depressed from losing the FA Cup semi-final and when I heard that, I decided not to listen to anybody else because that is such a shit take. As I said at the end of the game on Saturday, I feel the motivation for the team will be Sky high going into this game add whilst automatic promotion is a possibility, they will 100% be going for it.

Ipswich of course should be home and hosed already in second place and the fact that they are not, with just one win in their last four games, shows that they are definitely vulnerable. There are obviously two versions of Ipswich that have been playing this season, with their League position dictating that they must have been knocking teams over at some point, but I’ve watched highlights and live segments of their most recent games against Charlton and Middlesbrough and to be honest, they have looked bang average.

They do have some decent players of course with Jack Clarke and Anais Mehmeti having caused us problems before with their previous clubs Sunderland and Bristol City. Jaden Philogene can be dangerous as well but I never trust a player who has his first name ont he back of his shirt for no readily apparent reason. They struggle a little bit upfront with a choice of Azon or Hirst. Hirst was in the team at the start of the season but he mainly comes on as a sub now and if his performance against Middlesbrough is anything to go by, he comes on as a sub in the last 10 minutes and spends 50% of his time diving around on the floor.

There is a narrative this season about Ipswich and penalties, brought on by the fact that they have twice as many awarded to them as the nearest team in that particular table. They have had ten this season, whilst Saints for example, have had three. The awards that I’ve seen in the last few games follow the same pattern in that there is contact in the penalty area and then the Ipswich player absolutely throws himself to the ground. I’m willing to bet that this is something they work on and there’s no thought of staying on your feet given contact in the box and the referees at Championship level are too shit to spot it. Even in the Premier League, if the referee gave the penalty in the first place, VAR would just look at it and say, oh look, there’s the tiniest contract and we can’t therefore undermine our shit referee.

The bottom line is that I firmly believe that we are better than them and as long as we bring the energy and execute Tonda‘s game plan then we will win the game, but with both teams needing a win, us to stay in the race and them to win the race, it should be a decent attacking game.

In the normal scheme of things, there would be much rotation from Saturday but I can only see there being maybe four changes with Manning, Charles, Matsuki and Larin coming in for Welington Bragg, Fellows and Stewart. Nearly right as Matsuki is absent with a training ground knock and so Fellows keeps his place.

It’s Ipswich you show first as a Saints attack breaks down on the edge of their penalty area and they break up the pitch through an absent midfield, which ends in a low shot from Jaden one-name from the edge of the box, which bounces in front of Peretz to make it awkward, but he parries it away and out of danger. Ipswich win it back though and a cross comes in which THB waves his foot at and he must’ve momentarily shit himself as it looped just over the crossbar.

Saints first effort at goal comes from a counter press. Fellows gives the ball away but before Ipswich can break, Charles wins it back and finds Azaz, who plays the ball into Larin. He does well to make room for himself before trying to curl one into the top corner and putting it narrowly over the bar.

There’s going to be a lot of focus on the referee in this game and he doesn’t make the greatest of starts as Matasiwa deliberately brings down Scienza with a very obvious deliberate trip and nowhere near the ball, but it’s just a free kick. In it comes from Manning in the usual fashion and met well by the head of Larin but his downward header is straight at the Ipswich keeper Walton.

Burns breaks through midfield for Ipswich before driving in effort wide and then Saints attack down the left through Scienza but as he gets challenged by O’Shea, there is a bit of knee-on-knee contact which may get given in the Premier League but it’s not getting given here today and fair enough. Leo is not having fun with the referee as he gets fouled by Burns and gets up and is about to take on Furlong but the ref pulls him back and gives us a free kick. Well done. Prick referee. He must want to book Burns then? No.

The referee is not endearing himself to us as we load another free kick into the box and Furlong is literally on Azaz’ shoulders preventing him from jumping and then Larin gets sandwiched out of things by two defenders. It would’ve been harsh but I’ve seen those given this season, usually for Ipswich.

It’s been an interesting half of football in that neither team has been able to really play much through the presses of the opposition. Saints in particular are going long more often than not and whilst that’s a legitimate tactic with Larin upfront, there has been a little bit too much of it. When Ipswich do get the ball down and play however there seems to be a big void in our midfield with Shea Charles, not really defending well enough in tandem with Caspar Jander.

We start the second half of a bit more life in us, with Scienza cutting in off the left and seeing his effort blocked, but we recycle the ball out to Manning and his cross is met semi-acrobatically by Cyle Larin and his scissor kick effort is unfortunately straight down the middle of the goal and Walton gets up to push it over the bar. Good start, good effort.

Saints are trying to play quicker and that’s good but Fellows takes a shit touch back towards his own goal and he’s bundled off the ball. Greaves almost scoops the ball up in the air towards Azon, who does really well to beat THB in the air and then chase his own touch and as Woody hesitates, he pokes the ball across to Burns, who has come off the wing untracked and he puts his fucking foot through it and Peretz has absolutely no chance from there. Shit.

Saints respond with a cross into the box which is half headed clear but not very far to Azaz on the edge of the box and Greaves comes launching out of the defensive line, two-footed, misses the ball and catches him. It’s clearly outside the box and the referee clearly has a decision to make on whether it’s a dangerous tackle or not and he predictably bottles it. I mean, he’s completely out of control and didn’t touch the ball so why not only give a yellow for fuck‘s sake.

The free-kcik It’s just the right of the D and as the ‘Manning again’ chant goes around the Northam End, he drills it low past the wall, flicking off Nunez and Walton is left lying on the ground as it zips past his foot into the net. Get in.

Sam Edozie is on for Tom Fellows and his first contribution is to scuff a cross into the mixer which is half cleared as far as Azaz, who shows brilliant feet to weave past two defenders and drive a half-volley just wide of the far post

In to the last ten and Saints are now playing the football that they should’ve been playing all game. We keep the ball patiently in defence as Azaz finds Manning who, urged on by the crowd, travels fifty yards with it into absolutely acres of space. It’s final ball time and he slides a diagonal ball through to Larin, who still has a lot to do, but he chops back, sends two defenders for hotdogs and then, confronted with the flailing Walton, lifts it over him with the outside of his right foot into the far side of the net. What a fucking finish that is. And we have some Wembley style pandemonium in our end. The big man is on fucking fire.

Cyle was going to come off anyway and is replaced with Ross Stewart. Ipswich, now with nothing to lose come flying at us and we begin to sit a little bit deep. Ipswich put a long throw into the box which is headed clear by Wood and hacked clear by Edozie but not far and back it comes from Jack Clarke who chips it into the box where Manning loses a challenge at the back post and Charles stabs it clear to the edge of the penalty area and Clarke meets it and smashes it low through the crowd and past Peretz into the far corner. Fuck. To be fair to Ipswich, they want to go for the win so they get the ball back to the centre circle as soon as possible.

All of a sudden, Saints look completely gone and it’s all Ipswich. Clarke is the main man and he runs at the retreating Charles and Manning before having a poke with his right foot which hits the post comes out, bounces off Peretz and goes for a corner. That could’ve gone anywhere. They are allowed by the referee to take a minute and a half over it – clearly trying to make it the last attack of the game.

We have time for a bit of end-to-end and we do get another chance to break as Scienza weaves across the toip oif the penalty area and eventually feeds Bree, who crosses and in goes Stewart but the flag has gone up. Back come Ipswich with Clarke picking the ball up on the left and he takes on Bree before firing one at the top corner and Peretz makes an absolutely unbelievable fingertip save to tip it wide. That’s right up there with his Coventry save.

In Thomas Kirk, we have another referee who is not prepared to add on the time wasted in the extra time so there’s no time for another attack and the game ends for our second successive disappointing 2-2l draw at home which has officially closed the automatics door.

Bollocks. Playoffs lottery it is and Ipswich know that they only near to beat QPR at home to seal a return to the top flight. They celebrate with their fans in the corner, who have been loud all game but 99% of it was absolute fucking white noise drivel and there’s a special place in hell for their wank version of Oh When The Town Go Marching In.

Strange game. The neutral would probably have been entertained by the end to end second half in particular but neutral be fucked – our performance was strange. The first half it wasn’t good enough and we looked sluggish and weren’t winning any second balls. The second half started a little bit better but then we conceded a really crap goal as neither THB nor Woody covered themselves in glory allowing Burns to score with ease. That seemed to wake us up and equalising on the hour mark through Manning’s deflected free kick gave us hope but we never really had control of the game especially in midfield and I feel that Flynn Downes was a massive miss for us today. The brilliant run and finish by Cyle Larin should’ve been enough but we didn’t manage the rest of the game at all as we defended too deep, which allowed Ipswich encouragement to come forward and you could see it coming when they scored again. Fair plaly to them, they really wanted to win and looked at the side most likely to in the last few minutes with Peretz pulling off a ridiculous save to tip one wide for a corner and that we got very lucky with one that pinged off the post.

We shot our bolt when we scored our second and after that, we didn’t really have much. Did Wembley catch up with us a bit? I think it probably did but we have to get over it. Saturday’s game against Preston is going to be odd. Win it and we could finish anywhere between 3rd and 5th. Any other result and we’re 5th.

We’ve ended up not winning automatic promotion because of the shit start we had to the season under Will Still and the seven game non-winning run under Tonda. We’ve done brilliantly to even make the playoffs, but it’s just a little bit disappointing, having got ourselves into the position where we needed to win two home games to have it all in our hands going into the final day. Not to be however.

Bristol City killed us more than today did. As for today, the suspension of Flynn Downes caused us problems today. If he plays, then we have more controller midfield and we probably win. Caspar Jander had another ridiculous game in terms of tackles and interceptions but if you’ve got really high tackles and interceptions, that means that the opposition have got the ball a lot and that’s fine when it’s Manchester City but it’s not so great when it’s Ipswich. The midfield pairing today were too easy to play through. I thought Charles had a really poor game positionally in a defensive capacity. I also wasn’t impressed with how we Tonda handled the game once we went to one up. That was the time to either take off Charles, Azaz or Scienza and bring on Bragg or even Romeu. As it was, we just dropped deeper and invited them onto us and they were good enough to take advantage. It wasn’t a great day for Tonda and substitutions. He only used two but then, maybe he thought that Stewart and Edozie were poor and so didn’t trust any of the others.

Preston away on Saturday. The real excitement will be elsewhere and before tonight I didn’t really care who went up. I feel that Ipswich will be the more difficult potential playoff opponent, so I hope they get the automatic spot and the Ipswich fans that pissed me off tonight have a season of misery in the Premier League with their cacophony of tuneless dirge. When the town go marching in – fuck off.

A disappointing night but we are still fighting and we are still 18 league games unbeaten. Bring on preston and bring on the playoffs and up the Fucking Saints.