Dons upset top flight Tractor Boys to earn another shot at Premier League side
AFC Wimbledon (1) 2 Bugiel 40, Stevens 56
Ipswich Town (1) 2 Al Hamadi 3, Chaplin 86
Dons won 4-2 on pens
AFC Wimbledon thrillingly knocked Ipswich Town out of the Carabao Cup with a dramatic 4-2 victory in a penalty shoot-out after their second-round tie ended 2-2 over 90 minutes at Plough Lane.
Owen Goodman saved two Ipswich penalties to give Isaac Ogundere an opportunity to convert the decisive spot kick - and the Dons’ defender made no mistake with a fabulous finish to secure a huge cup upset.
The League Two side had done exceptionally well to recover from conceding against their Premier League visitors in less than three minutes, but came back to agonisingly almost win the game in normal time.
Ipswich in the end required an 86th-minute equaliser to take the game to penalties, but Wimbledon managed to conjure the Crazy Gang spirit of their predecessors to add another famous success to the club’s unique history.
It is the 50th anniversary season since the original Wimbledon FC giant-killing exploits as a non-league team, beating Burnley and drawing with the reigning league champions Leeds United at Elland Road.
That 1974-75 FA Cup run was the beginning of the Dons’ journey to producing their biggest shock of all in lifting the trophy at Wembley in 1988. And against Ipswich the current side continued the club’s tradition.
“The underdog story in football - it’s another amazing night and another chapter in that story” commented the Wimbledon manager, Johnnie Jackson, afterwards. “We always have to do it the hard way as a football club, but we find a way.”
While there were six changes for Wimbledon from the last league match, a 1-0 win away at Cheltenham Town, the Ipswich head coach, Kieran McKenna, included six debutants in his starting XI at Plough Lane.
Among them was Kalvin Phillips, the recent England international who probably could not have imagined opening the latest phase of his career, on loan from Manchester City, at a League Two ground.
With Chiedozie Ogbene also in the visitors’ line-up, having just joined from Luton Town a few hours earlier, the team that faced Wimbledon had managed to have only one pre-match training session together.
Nevertheless, despite a total of 10 changes from the side beaten at Manchester City last weekend, with the ex-West Ham defender Ben Johnson the sole player to retain his place, Ipswich began brightly.
Wimbledon found themselves behind from the first corner of the game, swung in left-footed by Conor Townsend for Ali Al Hamadi to rise unchallenged at the far post and head in powerfully.
It was perhaps inevitable that the very popular former Dons’ striker would score on his first return to Plough Lane, having only been signed by Ipswich from Wimbledon in January, and respectfully Al Hamadi did not celebrate his goal in front of the home fans in the South Stand.
It could have made for a very difficult and uncomfortable evening for the hosts, as Ipswich were able to almost effortlessly dominate possession, with Phillips impressive in setting the tempo and rhythm.
However, Wimbledon should have been level midway through the first half, as Hus Biler’s long cross from the right was directed on by James Ball to Omar Bugiel for an excellent low left-footed first-time strike.
It was immediately flagged for offside by the assistant referee, with no VAR in use in the early rounds of the Carabao Cup to overturn the decision, as Bugiel was clearly played onside by Dara O’Shea, another of Ipswich’s debutants.
Crucially, Wimbledon still managed to equalise shortly before half-time - and appropriately it was Bugiel who scored to make up for the injustice of having his earlier effort erroneously disallowed.
The big attacker headed home forcefully a long free-kick, perfectly delivered from the right by Jake Reeves. And Wimbledon’s captain then repeated the set-piece after the interval to give his side an unexpected lead.
This time it was Bugiel’s fellow forward, Matty Stevens, who got his head to Reeves’s near-identical free-kick to put the club in 8th in League Two ahead against their 18th-placed Premier League opponents.
It had the Dons dreaming of potential glory, and they held out for half an hour as Ipswich sent on some of their stars from the substitutes’ bench to try to rescue the game and avoid a premature cup exit.
Just over four minutes remained on the clock when another testing Townsend corner was not cleared and O’Shea sent the ball back in for Cameron Burgess to head goalwards, with Conor Chaplin applying the finishing touch.
Goodman in the Wimbledon goal was devastated to have been beaten in the air by Ipswich’s 5’7” captain after coming to claim the high ball - but the keeper was able to make amends soon afterwards in the deciding penalties.
His saves from Jack Taylor and Omari Hutchinson turned around the shoot-out, in which the Dons had fallen behind when Reeves sent his penalty over the bar, not long after having been named as the man-of-the-match.
The raucously-greeted victory was Wimbledon’s best result at the club’s new Plough Lane stadium, and it put them into the third round of the Carabao Cup for only the second time, matching the run 3 seasons ago.
On that occasion they were beaten by Arsenal, and Jackson joked that a repeat visit there might be ideal to give his players a chance of revenge. The home draw that came out against Newcastle United could be even better.
Ogundere maintaining his 100% penalty success rate - his previous one was in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy - enabled the Dons to continue their 100% winning start to this season at Plough Lane, in three different competitions already.
Newcastle will find it far from straightforward when they visit, as Ipswich discovered in spite of having 79.1% possession versus just 20.9% - and Wimbledon scoring from both of their solitary two attempts on goal.
Against an Ipswich team who have now lost all their three games this season, in a contest of four headed goals from four set-pieces, two Dons free-kicks and two Town corners, it proved to be enough.
And who knows how far Wimbledon’s famous underdog upsets can continue?
AFC Wimbledon: (5-3-2) Goodman - Biler, Ogundere, Lewis, Ryan Johnson, Tilley (Furlong 90) - Maycock, Reeves, Ball (Smith 71) - Bugiel (Pigott 72), Stevens
Ipswich Town: (4-2-3-1) Walton - Ben Johnson, O’Shea, Burgess, Townsend - Phillips (Luongo 67), Cajuste (Taylor 66) - Ogbene (Harness 46), Chaplin, Clarke (Hutchinson 78) - Al Hamadi (Delap 78)
Attendance: 7,934
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