42 touches, 0 key passes: The Ipswich Town player that struggled to make an impact v Fleetwood Town | OneFootball

After two consecutive cup matches in the EFL trophy and the FA Cup respectively, Ipswich Town got back to league One action on Friday night.

Travelling to bottom half side Fleetwood Town, the Tractor Boys will have been targeting all three points in the fixture, but it wasn’t to be.

Indeed, despite Luke Woolfenden’s early goal, Ipswich were denied all three points late on when Fleetwood’s Cian Hayes put the ball in the back of the net six minutes into injury time.

One interesting aspect of the match was Kyle Edwards’ first start in three league matches at left-midfield.

With Marcus Harness set to be sidelined for the coming weeks and months, it could be that the 24-year-old sees plenty of action in the side in the short-term future.

With that said, we looked at how Edwards performed statistically, according to Sofascore, in the Fleetwood draw.

Kyle Edwards’ performance in numbers

It was a tough night for Edwards on the pitch, with the 24-year-old receiving just a 6.6 match rating in his return to the side.

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That wasn’t through a lack of involvement, though, with Edwards having 42 touches during his 68-minute performance, and making 26 passes, 81% of which were accurate.

Operating down the left-hand side, though, what you want is dribbling and unfortunately, it was not his best night in that regard, making just two dribble attempts of which only one was successful.

Edwards’ lack of cutting edge and his inability to use the ball effectively was perhaps what he struggled with most on the night, though.

Despite his touches of the ball, the 24-year-old produced no key passes, and of the four crosses he attempted during the match, none were deemed accurate. Edwards also lost possession 14 times.

Defensively, Edwards’ numbers did not make up for his struggles in the attacking areas, either. The attack-minded player won just two of his six ground duels on the night and made only one tackle.

Indeed, it was a tough 68 minutes for the 24-year-old who can and will no doubt produce better going forwards.

With Harness injured, Edwards is looking at the possibility of a run of consecutive starts in the coming weeks, which will likely see him start to produce much better performances than on Friday night.