Guardian writers’ predicted position: 18th (NB: this is not necessarily Nick Ames’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)
Last season’s position: 2nd, Championship
Prospects
A generation of football followers had forgotten about Ipswich Town but one of the country’s famous old clubs are back after 22 years away, throbbing with life and confidence after a stunning rise through the divisions. What an occasion it will be when they host Liverpool, regular rivals for major honours during Town’s heyday in the 1970s and early 1980s, to open the season and the hope in Suffolk is that the glory years do not come to appear so distant.
Portman Road is a unique venue, comfortably one of the more atmospheric stadiums in the top two divisions and for many years associated with old-world politesse. The white wine rarely ran dry in the boardroom, to adapt a phrase coined by their former chairman John Cobbold; it was a friendly, often charming place to visit but for two decades that hospitality extended too far. Ipswich sank to League One, became hollow at the core, were privately regarded among many rivals as a soft touch. It would take an almighty jolt to stir them.
The warmth of yore remains but this is a different club now, one that has hauled itself into the modern era and has no intention of putting a ceiling on expectations. The ambitions are big, the edges a little harder, the achievement in recording back-to-back automatic promotions unquestionable and a once-despondent fanbase energised. But now comes the hardest part of all: Kieran McKenna’s exhilarating team are here ahead of schedule and the task of staying up, which will entail upgrading tactfully while asking the core of the side that swept them here to hit fresh heights, is the sternest of his two-and-a-half-year tenure.
A long pre-season has been decidedly mixed. There have been coups in the transfer market, the highly rated defender Jacob Greaves being tempted from Hull and Omari Hutchinson answering McKenna’s prayers by making a permanent move from Chelsea. The former West Ham right-back Ben Johnson is a canny addition while Aro Muric and Liam Delap fit McKenna’s expansive, aggressive approach from back to front.
But they were light enough on numbers to upset Borussia Mönchengladbach by sending an under-21 side to play a proposed first-team friendly at short notice last week and the race is on to bring in more players. Nathan Broadhead, a key forward, will miss the early weeks through injury and there are concerns the striker George Hirst faces a lay-off too.
At least one more attacker was already needed and an even bigger priority is to find a midfielder ready to challenge the outstanding, but ageing, partnership of Massimo Luongo and Sam Morsy. Other existing stalwarts such as Wes Burns and Conor Chaplin will be keen to make a quick impact but perhaps it is helpful that their first two games, a trip to the Etihad follows Liverpool’s visit, will not be among those that decide their fate.
This season could well prove a step too far for Ipswich, in which case at least they are back on the map and more than sufficiently resourced to go again. But under the brilliant McKenna it would be equally unsurprising to see them slot straight in, jostle their way past less stable rivals and emulate Brighton or Brentford. However it ends, Ipswich will at once offer something excitingly new and comfortingly familiar.
The manager
It sounds corny but that does not make it less true: Ipswich’s most important signing of pre-season was the hefty new contract agreed with McKenna in late May. In a chaotic period after Ipswich’s promotion he was linked heavily with every job going; there was truth in most of it and he has not denied being tempted by the bright lights of more established Premier League clubs such as Brighton and Chelsea. The fiercely intelligent 38-year-old has not put a foot wrong since arriving from Manchester United’s first-team coaching staff in December 2021. He is the real deal: tactically super-smart, emotionally astute, steely when required and refreshingly open with fans and media. McKenna will surely move upwards eventually but there is a sense almost anything is possible while he remains at Portman Road.
Off-field picture
There was relief in Ipswich, and a raised eyebrow or two outside, when they were taken over in April 2021 by the US group Gamechanger 20. It is ultimately the vehicle of a pension fund in Arizona but the owners, fronted by the indefatigable chief executive, Mark Ashton, have made good on their promises to transform the club. It was in a shoddy state when they arrived; now Portman Road has been tidied up, there is a new training ground on the way and the commercial department has used the club’s sponsorship deal with Ed Sheeran astutely. More than 63,000 replica shirts were sold last season, putting them towards the country’s top bracket: it sums up the renewed love a deceptively football-crazy community has found for its team after those long years of steady decline.
Breakout star
Leif Davis dropped down two divisions when departing Leeds for Ipswich, who were feeling the first benefits of Gamechanger’s investment, in a £1m move two years ago. His decision-making was handsomely rewarded when his current employers outstripped his old club in May and it is accurate to say Ipswich could not have done it without him. The 24-year-old is nominally a left-back but offers so much more: stellar set-piece delivery, a phenomenal engine and a preternatural capacity to select the correct final ball. His 18 assists last season comfortably broke the Championship’s record for a defender and the task is to show he can be similarly impactful at the very top. It will certainly be a new test for his defensive capabilities but, should Davis start the season well, a pathway to England honours could well open up.
The A-lister
The drinks flowed at Ipswich’s post-promotion celebration and so did the laughs. But McKenna was neither under the influence nor joking when, asked what he would like for his upcoming birthday, he replied: “Omari.” Within six weeks he had his wish. The 20-year-old Hutchinson was eased into Ipswich’s team gently during the first half of a season on loan from Chelsea; by its conclusion he was the best attacker in the Championship, unplayable with the ball and a ferocious presser off it. After that he was always going to fetch a hefty price and Ipswich stretched to a club record £20m, the player eager to continue a mutual love affair. Ipswich will need a forward with genuine X factor if they are to stay up and Hutchinson, capable of changing a game’s dynamic in an instant, should only get better from here.
What they did this summer
Wrapping promotion up in the regular season meant that Ipswich’s players, with their Premier League bow more than three months down the track, could enjoy themselves. A night in the pub with Sheeran, who commandeered an old haunt in the remote Suffolk town Halesworth, quickly went viral largely due to an impromptu concert in the toilets. Festivities continued in Las Vegas and elsewhere with significant international commitments thin on the ground after Wales, represented by Broadhead and Burns, failed to reach Euro 2024. Once the serious business started, pre-season was divided between Austria, Germany and summery Suffolk.