A sign of change?

In the summer of 2011, Andre Villas-Boas was announced as manager of Chelsea.  As the young Portuguese shortly completes his first six months in charge, he has endured a particularly patchy start to his career at Chelsea.

Chelsea have endured a season which, thus far, has seen an unedifying struggle to escape from the Champions League Group Stage, itself normally such a formality, exit from the Carling Cup at the hands of Liverpool and conceding an eye-watering five times at home to Arsenal.

Yet, despite these defeats, what has been most evident in the 2011-2012 Chelsea side is the undeniable sense that change is afoot. Whether the change is for the better, and so far it is hard to quantify, what is very evident is that Villas-Boas is attempting  to create a side in his mould.

Its a vast contrast with events at Portman Road, as Paul Jewell fast approaches the first anniversary of his own appointment. Jewell spent the first five months of his role assessing the playing staff he had been left with and outlining the blueprint for “Paul Jewells Ipswich”- favouring a 4-4-2 system, utilising wingers, bringing pace and youth to the side, adding steel to the midfield- all preferences which were varyingly put forward.

A further six months and fourteen signings later, Jewell has yet to assert any discernable change to the playing style. The side remains as astonishingly susceptible on the break as it was when conceding five goals at home to Norwich and four goals away at Swansea to spoil Easter for any Ipswich fan. In the course of bringing in so many players, the average age of the side has gone up, whilst remaining as devoid of pace and width as previously.

Some of these shortcomings might ordinarily be attributable to simply not being able to bring in the right players at the right time. Yet, it is the system, and the formations which enforce that system, which are so worryingly missing. 

Town kicked off the season with a lone frontman and a five-man midfield. Which soon transitioned into a 4-4-2 system. Which was then ditched for a diamond formation, which reaped rewards until its weaknesses were so dramatically exposed by opposition managers. The side has now fluctuated between the latter two styles for the past month, as it has plummeted towards the foot of the league.

During the course of this tactical merry-go-round, alarm bells began to ring when Jewell stated that he was trying to “find the right formula” with the current group of players. This followed an earlier suggestion that he might not be able to play a 4-4-2 system as he was unsure he had the personnel to suit.

These are all concerning indications of a manager who has collected together a group of players with no discernible strategy of where they are to fit. Jewell has spoken at length about building for the future, but its unclear how the current side are going to morph into the vision of the future. As a result, to Ipswich supporters, talk of the future begins to sound like exactly that.

It is perhaps best embodied in the fledgling Town career of Jay Emmanuel-Thomas. The lanky Arsenal protégé is often, along with Aaron Cresswell, held up by the manager as an example of what is being built. Jewell even went as far as to suggest that Emmanuel-Thomas would now be a regular member of his first team, if it wasn’t for the lack of fitness resulting from his pre-season training. 

Yet, Emmanuel-Thomas has, more often than not, been utilised in an evidently unsuited and isolated right-wing position, usually with the game in its dying embers. A player who appears to possess the ball control so common-place in Arsenal academy products has had to contend with long balls pumped towards his forehead. Former Ipswich coach Steve Foley has lamented that a player of his type needs the ball at his feet, and to get as many touches as possible.

At this stage, its hard to quantify just how Jewell was planning to use Emmanuel Thomas this season, and even harder to envisage how he is to transition into a key player in our future team.

Yet, its an approach which is symbolic of much of Jewells management so far. Without an apparently clear system to start with, its unsurprising that players are finding themselves used in a variety of unfamiliar roles and positions, whilst fans are struggling to detect any signs of what the development actually is.

To be clear, being able to affect change, having a clear plan of action, are not aspects which are purely the domain of a leading Premier League manager. Look further down the league and, whether positively or negatively viewed, managers like Alex McLeish, Roy Hodgson, Eddie Howe, Tony Mowbray, Dougie Freedman and, dare I say it, Paul Lambert have all, like Villas-Boas, infused a club with a semblance of their own style, their own strategies in a relatively similar time frame. 

To date, there is little about Ipswich Town Football Club that suggests a style of play, a structure, which represents what Paul Jewell is bringing to the club and what he aims to bring in the long term. If the future is 4-4-2, with pace and wingers, with defensive midfielders, then lets play that way and sign stop-gaps where necessary until we have brought in the right players.  The current players appear to be stop-gaps too, but stop-gaps for what? Nobody expects the project to be complete, or even halfway there, but surely there ought to be some signs of a direction?

Chelsea fans have largely shown a degree of patience in supporting the growing pains which their new manager is bringing about. But where there are little signs of change, there is little else to protect a manager when the results turn against him.