The reason we follow football is its unpredictability: the sense, even the expectation that something extraordinary can happen during any game. One of the main reasons people bet on football, on the other hand, is the predictable opposite; a belief that by looking at results and knowing lots about teams, players and patterns we can accurately forecast the future – have a bit of fun – and occasionally make some money.

So instead of spending hard earned cash on tickets, train fares and pre-match chips and beer, why didn’t the 16,000 or so football fans who turned up on Saturday put a tenner on two simple and incredibly predictable bets, given both teams’ recent form?

Going into this match Ipswich hadn’t scored in three games and only managed three goals in the previous six before that. So the fact that even against the Championship surprise-package leaders, Huddersfield, they could manage only a single shot on target during 97 minutes of play…should perhaps have come as no surprise?

Huddersfield were just as predictable, odds-wise. Their seven previous league wins this season had all been with 1-0 or 2-1 score lines.  Ipswich’s total lack of goal power and Huddersfield’s sensational start could not have shouted any louder: THIS GAME IS GOING TO FINISH IPSWICH 0 HUDDERSFIELD 1. And SURPRISE…it did! The odds on that result, looking back, were incredibly generous at 8-1 against; but this reporter still didn’t see it coming.  Wasn’t it highly unlikely that Ipswich would prove as toothless as they had been against Brighton, Leeds or Villa (for the first 90 minutes?) Surely Mick McCarthy would swap things round and play two strikers, next to each other, from the start?  There must be a reasonable chance that a feral seagull, bored of scavenging in the nearby docks, would one day swoop down on the pitch to peck out an opposition goalkeeper’s eyes, resulting in him slamming a goal kick into his own net?

Weirdly, none of these things actually happened.  Ipswich’s only shot on target had to wait until the 65th minute.  Freddie Sears has fathered more children in 2016 (one) than he has scored goals (nil) but at least he forced Huddersfield’s promising young goalkeeper Danny Ward into a save. His only hand warming of the afternoon.  The shot was greeted with rapturous and ironic applause by the long-suffering Ipswich fans, many of whom booed their team off at the end of the game.

Huddersfield, on the other hand, epitomised what a winning team looks like.  From Ward in goal through the powerful Schindler at centre half, via Hogg in midfield and progressing onto the agile Wells and Kachunga up front they played swift, simple and highly mobile football.  In the 5th minute Hogg should have headed his team in front, instead nodding the ball down into the ground at close range, from where it bounced into the Ipswich goalkeeper’s hands.

Then in the 29th minute Kachunga left that goalkeeper’s right post quivering as a powerful and instinctive shot cannoned back out into play, rather than whistling into the net.  But there would no final reprieve and in the 57th minute, following an utterly needless gift of a corner from Ipswich’s captain Luke Chambers, Huddersfield finally took the lead. An excellent and fiercely struck cross from Mooy was powered by Schindler’s flicking header into the top corner of the net, before Ipswich had even recovered from giving the corner away; let alone thought about preparing to defend it.

Brief periods of Ipswich pressure before that fine Huddersfield goal, and in the game’s final ten minutes after it, hinted at a scrambled Ipswich duck-breaker; but it was not to be and in truth, never looked likely to come. Huddersfield, prompted by the dominant and hugely impressive midfield force of Jonathan Hogg, thoroughly deserved a win that guaranteed their retention of the Championship’s top spot.

Manager Wagner has moulded a balanced team with a relentless work-rate, which is all the more impressive given that three of this starting eleven (Ward, Kachunga and Mooy) are actually on loan from other clubs. No wonder 802 of their fans made their way to Suffolk.  Good luck to them, for the rest of what may be a very exciting season. Meanwhile and to return to the subject we started on.  Luck should have little to do with betting calculations.  Ipswich’s next game is a potential early season relegation scrap at Blackburn Rovers, who are third from bottom and after only 11 games have a minus-8 goal difference.

Rovers have (incredibly) failed to keep a clean sheet in ANY of those 11 games. Surely therefore Ipswich might manage at least one goal against them – especially hundreds of miles away from the pressure that they have put themselves under, through a series of inept home displays?

Blackburn on the other hand will be desperate to claw their way out of trouble.
Paddy Power’s offer of 12-1 against Blackburn to be winning at half time, but the result to be a draw by full time, looks pretty attractive to me. I might even bet on it myself…

Match review by Grant Bage