Thursday 16 April 2015 16:15, UK
A place in the Championship playoffs looks to be at stake when Wolves host Ipswich in the early kick-off at Molineux on Saturday. For Christophe Berra, it’s a return to the club where he played three years of Premier League football. Adam Bate caught up with him to discuss the game…
Christophe Berra never scored a goal for Wolves. Not in 157 appearances during his four-and-a-half years at the club. Now in his second season with Ipswich, thanks to his winning goal against Blackpool last weekend, he’s already into double figures. So is it time to break his Molineux duck? “You never know,” laughs Berra. “If that happened I don’t know if I’d get out of the stadium alive!
“At Wolves I did have chances but there’d be a bad miss or the 'keeper would make a really good save and the longer it goes on the more you think that your luck isn’t going to come. But at Ipswich I scored with my first start for the club and I’ve not really looked back.
“I scored for Scotland a couple of weeks ago too. I have been getting my head on things and getting them goal-bound and maybe others have got on the end of them so that’s all I can do. Hopefully I can get on the scoresheet again.”
This unexpected goalscoring form is indicative of how things have gone for the defender since his move to Ipswich in the summer of 2013. Despite a shoestring budget, Mick McCarthy’s men are in the top six with only three games remaining. It promises to be a tense finale. “It’s all to play for and they’re all big games now,” says Berra. “We really want to pick up as many wins as possible.
“We’ve had a good season and it’s in our hands. We’ve got a good squad with a lot of good players and a manager and staff who keep us motivated. Not many teams like playing against us so we’ve just got to keep on doing what we do and hope that pays off for us in the remaining games.”
Championship knowledge
It’s testament to the efforts of McCarthy, a manager Berra knows well from their time together at Wolves. McCarthy paid more than £2m to take the Scot to Wolves in January 2009 with Berra helping the club to the Championship title that season. Few know English football’s second tier so well.
“He knows this league inside out,” adds the 30-year-old Scot. “He’s very good with the players because he tells you the truth. He demands 100 per cent out of you every game and the boys respect that. They know that if you don’t perform then you’ll be out of the team.
“It was a bit different at Wolves because the budget was higher and he could bring players in. He also developed some young players there like Matt Jarvis and Michael Kightly who moved on to other things and there were a lot of players like that. There’s less money here so he’s got to be clever with his squad and get the best out of it.”
Stats star
Berra is certainly playing close to his best. Indeed, according to WhoScored.com and their interpretation of the Opta data, he is the Championship’s best player. As well as the goals, he’s made more clearances and more blocks than anyone else in the division and Berra admits he’s aware of the plaudits that have come his way.
“I have seen that,” he says. “I’ve got a Twitter account so I sometimes see that I’m in the team of the week. Obviously it’s a good little thing to have but all that matters is what your manager thinks and, to be honest, you know as a player whether you’ve done well or not and whether you could have done better. It’s still good when things like that give you a pat on the back as well though.
“Over the course of the season I’ve been fairly consistent, which is one of the things that you need from a centre half. In that position, there’s no point being a four out of 10 one game and then a nine out of 10 in another. It’s about being a seven or an eight every week and I’d like to think that I do that. It’s just about managing the game.
“As a team, not everyone is going to play well every week but as long as we’ve got seven, eight or nine players playing well then if someone makes a mistake then others are there to help them out in that situation. That’s what we need.”
It’s the sort of responsibility that Berra has relished. Having turned 30 in January, he has a leadership role in this young squad with only bit-part player Stephen Hunt having made more Premier League appearances. But while a calming influence is demanded on the field, it’s difficult to contain the excitement when a return to the Premier League is within reach.
Premier League aim
“It’s the aim for everyone,” he adds. “I was lucky enough to experience it for three years and there are boys in the dressing room who’ve not experienced it and are dying to do that. Any professional footballer wants to test themselves in the best league in the country and the Premier League isn’t just the best league in England but one of the best in the world.
“We’ve got a couple of young players who have come through in Teddy Bishop and Tyrone Mings and those boys have done really well. They’re learning from their experiences. The only way you get better is by making mistakes and learning from them and people continue to do that to the end of their career whether they’re 19 or 33. But the older you get, hopefully the less mistakes you make.”
There have been some slip ups of late with Ipswich winning only six games out of 17 prior to last weekend. But hard-fought wins over Blackpool and Cardiff at Portman Road have succeeded in putting the team back on course for the playoffs and Berra believes the mentality of the players has been crucial.
“We’ve got a good set of boys and they never get too down too quickly,” he says. “They come in every day with a smile on their face. We know we’re not going to be winning every time but we show the right attitude and that’s all you can ask for sometimes.
Nerves
“We’ve been in it so long so it’d be disappointing to drop out of it at the end of the season. We’ve been a bit inconsistent lately but we’re still in there amongst it and we’ve still got to play Wolves. The table is going to change over the last three games and there’ll be a lot of nerves involved. We’ll see what the outcome is.”
Saturday’s game at Molineux will play a big part in deciding whether the season will take Ipswich to the brink of Wembley - and a potential showdown with rivals Norwich - or the bitter disappointment of finding themselves at risk of missing out on the final weekend. A win could all but confirm their playoff place but defeat might leave them relying goal difference to go their way. It’s that tight.
For Berra, it makes for a particularly dramatic occasion as he returns to his former club for the first time since leaving. He knows it’s make or break. “We beat them once already this season at home and we’ll be looking to do the same at Molineux,” he says. “It’s going to be a massive game.”
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