We’re often told that teams in a difficult situation need to treat every game like it’s a cup final. The thing is, teams who need to treat games like they’re cup finals, are not usually the kind of team who get to cup finals. In fact, if anything, the opposite is true. Teams that consistently play in and win cup finals don’t treat them any differently to other games. The key to winning cup finals, therefore, is not to treat them like cup finals.

Nobody really expected anything from our trip to Ipswich, particularly after the soulless defeat to Swansea on Monday. If we hadn’t been to Portman Road multiple times in recent years, we might have been treated it more like a New Year’s Day treat than a genuine league fixture.

The Sky+ coverage, which promises us several billion games a year, has improved over the last year and a half, the commentary teams do now come across as reasonably balanced and informed. Still, they feel the need to extract a narrative from each game, which may just be something they drum into you at commentary school. If you’re going to be talking for nearly two hours, you’ll need something to say when the best option is probably to say nothing at all.

It’s not really necessary; it’s hard to imagine anyone other than fans of the two teams choosing to watch it. Nobody watching really needs the grand narrative to be explained to them. Still, when co-commentator Dave Edwards said that Tyler Goodrham was back in his preferred number 10 role, it was kind of nice that he’d noticed.

The commentary team of Edwards and Guy Havord were almost apologetic about our plight. Ipswich are flying, particularly after beating Coventry City last week. The tone towards us was almost that we’d just found out we were there by virtue of some administrative accident, like someone had appointed Joey Essex as the Archbishop of Canterbury and only just realised that he really wasn’t suited to the role.

The preamble, as the game got underway, was a discussion about our spending in comparison to theirs – £40million compared to our £2m. There was some talk about us being ‘manger-less’ which always has that disapproving tone of local village gossips talking about an ‘unmarried mum’ who has just moved into the Old Vicarage in a Marian Keyes novel. It’s treated with suspicion, like there’s a wider story that needs to be told.

The tone was familiar; it was like the opening exchanges in an FA Cup third round tie between a Premier League side and a lower-league minnow. In fact, it’s entirely possible that this time next year it will be. Ipswich were pre-season favourites and now seem to have found their feet after a slow start. We were favourites to go down and, well, perhaps we’re not doing much to counter that vibe. The message was either; ‘there’s a reason this will be a pasting’ or ‘there’s a reason this will be a seismic shock’. What it didn’t say was ‘this is a fixture between two teams in the same division’.

We didn’t do much to dispel the opinion, they pressed forward with a calm expectation and we let them. People smarter than me might point out that Ipswich were too good and didn’t allow us to play, but we seemed overawed and too respectful. 

After 17 minutes, Filip Krastev thought the best form of defence was to dribble his way out of our box and into trouble. Conceding possession, we backed off respectfully to allow Jaden Philogene to advance into the penalty box to fire home. One area Sky haven’t improved is the sound production on these games, when the ball hit the back of the net, something seemed to trip the crowd noise, and the celebrations were greeted with a haunting silence. It was like watching a beloved pet being euthanised for its own good.

It got worse, Tyler Goodrham limped off to be replaced by Siriki Dembele whose first contribution was to get booked for threatening to throw the ball at someone in the crowd. Given Dembele’s recent off the field issue, alluded to by Gary Rowett and Craig Short, it seemed to show a rare crack in the apparent togetherness of the squad. 

Then, by some strange miracle, we equalised. Krastev’s drag back fed Will Lankshear to fire beyond Christian Walton. The commentators wanted to applaud Krastev’s ingenuity, but in truth he tripped over and the ball squirted out to let Lankeshear in. It wasn’t a particularly well-constructed goal, more a confluence of moments that presented a chance. ‘His first goal in two months’ said Havord, omitting the fact that he’s barely played over that period for some inexplicable reason.

It was getting into late-afternoon and maybe I’d had too late a night and one too many ‘Caribbean Cruisers’ bringing in the New Year, but it didn’t feel like the fightback was truly on. We had a decent spell, which prompted a brief shifting in the narrative towards something which suggested we might be a team of similar status after all.

Then, just as we started to think about getting to half-time on terms, Darnell Furlong walked through our defence to feed Chuba Akpom to restore the lead. It all felt very routine. 

Brian De Keersmaecker (or just Keersmaecker as he was called all afternoon) might have equalised but skewed the ball wide when clear. Equally, they might have extended the lead and we were reliant on Jamie Cumming more than once. In the end it was a result which progressed their ambitions and didn’t humiliate us. Which is exactly the expectations I take into cup games. It wasn’t the mindset of a Championship side hungry for points.

We were plucky and courageous, but showed little sign that we had a plan to get much out of the game. Are we beginning to accept our fate? Dropping to 23rd means we’re in the prime position to be the next club to become consumed by that inevitability. Gary Rowett had a big job coming in to keep us up last year, whoever comes in now has an even bigger challenge. With another potential battering at Sheffield United on Sunday, by the time the new manager arrives, we may be in too deep to be rescued.

Adopting an attitude of treating each game like a cup game or cup final will only see us perform occasionally. We need to find an identity and a shared purpose, a belief that we deserve points and will survive, otherwise we’ll just become a collection of individuals awaiting our fate.