Town go through to the second round of the FA Cup to face National League North side Buxton at home at the end of the month.

It took 70 minutes for the breakthrough in Sandhurst, perhaps it took far longer than we would’ve hoped. Bracknell certainly didn’t make it easy for us they kept a strong man-to-man coverage for nearly the whole game and Ipswich couldn’t string 10 passes together for the first 30 minutes of the game.

The build-up play was lacking in many areas, we certainly didn’t play to the pitch size as it was a lot smaller than what we’re used to at Portman Road. The stray wide balls constantly seemed to fly out of play for throw-ins constantly breaking up our play.

All things considered, the town line-up was a very strong one:
GK – Hladky
RCB – Donacien (Subbed for – Agabje 87’)
CB – Keogh
LCB – Burgess
RM/RWB – Jackson (Subbed for – Burns 71’)
RCM – Morsy (c) (Subbed for – Camara 79’)
LCM – Ball (Subbed for – Chaplin 71’)
LM/LWB – Vincent-Young
RF – Humphreys
LF – Edwards
CF – Ladapo (Subbed for – Buabo 87’)

The hardly-needed Vaclav Hladky was in goal and he only had to make one or two proper saves but distributed well and probably deserves a 7/10.

Janoi Donacien, Richard Keogh and Cameron Burgess all had very solid games, sometimes letting a bit too much space in behind the midfield where awkward bounces seemed to just beat us, but never really caused us a terrible problem. They all to me get a 7/10.

Kayden Jackson had a decent game but possibly wasn’t given the best balls to work with up the touchline, Bracknell’s left-hand side did stop our right side from doing a huge amount in comparison to the left, where Vincent-Young seemed to time after time have acres of space that in the first half we just couldn’t really exploit, and it wasn’t until the second half where Vincent-Young helped drag the opposition right back out of position more often than not. Jackson gets a 6/10 whilst KAne Vincent-Young gets an 8/10 and for most gets the man of the match but not for me.

Morsy is one of the best midfielders in the league, if not the best in contention with possibly Barry Bannan, but today once again class just oozed out of him, like Cole Skuse used to do, rack in the hard yards and no one really knows he’s there until he’s not. A certain 7.5 for me.

However, his midfield partner Dom Ball was a different story tonight, kept giving the ball away with poor loose passes, he looks awfully rusty and the only game he really has been decent in this season is the EFL Trophy match against Northampton. Other than that Ball is getting a 4.5/10 for today's performance.

The forwards as usual found it somewhat a bit hard to find the right service and hit the back of the net. A surprise to me that Cameron Humphreys was playing on the right of the three, where he didn’t seem the most comfortable throughout the first 60 minutes, although I have to say even with that I thought he had a very good game in this new position for him, but when he moved back to midfield at 71 minutes he just looked so much more comfortable and quickly set up the second goal and gets a solid 8/10, even with a few missed chances he was in the right areas and for a young lad needs to get some more minutes, for me, he is my man of the match!

Kyle Edwards mainly looked like he was in the game, sometimes just seemed to get stuck in the pitch when trying to take people on and possibly needs to work on his balance getting into the 18-yard box early and blazing one over, but overall, a solid performance working with Vincent-Young up and down the side-line 7/10.

Freddie Ladapo wasn’t brilliant today, he got in the areas you would expect of him and still, the service wasn’t always great thanks to a stout Bracknell defence, but I felt he wasn’t seeing the ball that well for the first 60 minutes of the game, he did seem to get some confidence running in behind the defence a couple of times in the first half, which seemed to work, but the final balls again just weren’t the best in the tightly packed 18-yard box. He did get the goal to double up the lead after a nice bit of work from Humphreys and KVY to supply the cross in and Ladapo does know where he needs to be for the ball coming in its 7.5/10.

The subs, Wes Burns and Panutche Camara, linked up for the last goal as Burns squared it to Camara to finish in an empty net. Conor Chaplin looked good as well getting on the ball and putting Bracknell to the sword. It was also very nice to see that Kieran McKenna was more than happy to bring on the young guns for the last few minutes to see out the last few minutes, with Edwin Agbaje and Gerrard Buabo getting a good bit of first-team experience in the cup.

Overall, I thought we didn’t make it easy for ourselves, which seems like something we still need to work on, as were not as clinical in the first half as we need to be, however tactically not really too much to complain about except individual errors that nearly caused Bracknell to have a goal at what could’ve been a pinnacle point in the game.

Credit where credit is due as well because Bracknell played out their skins for all 90 minutes of the game and, yes, the result went the way everyone might have expected, we dealt with the opposition and avoided a big cup upset which definitely seemed on the cards for the first 70 minutes.

Bracknell played a classy game of football and didn’t sit back and take it, they knew they could cause us problems and the stats won’t show that for the first 75 minutes you couldn’t really choose either side. Although luckily for Town unlike last season it’s no replay and straight to Portman Road for the second round against another non-league side Buxton.

DinDjarin added 01:24 - Nov 8 Not sure what game you were watching.
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slade1 added 06:42 - Nov 8 I pretty well agree with most of that but with one exception. You say Bracknell played a classy game of football? I thought the complete opposite. Rather than a classy game, I would say a tactical game. As in their tactics from the fist whistle was to close us down very quickly, hassle us, and get very close to our man on the ball, get in our faces and to give us no room. They were very physical at times. All to try and stop our passing game, which worked to be honest. I wouldn't of thought they played that way every game, rather it was just their tactics on the night and for a large part of the game it worked. So all in all, nothing classy about the way Bracknell played, but they knew their job on the night and done their best to stick with it. These 'minnows' verses 'top club' cup matches either go one of two ways, a decent win for the top club or a unlikely victory for the minnows. However we played and however scrappy it was, the fact is we won. It may have been a different outcome as other 'top clubs' have found out this FA cup weekend.

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