Ipswich’s pulse beats faster on verge of ending Premier League exile

In Ipswich the businesses are decking their premises in blue and white while passers-by wish the hours away. Banners, flags, good-luck messages and the nervous thrill of an underlying hubbub: there is only one topic of conversation in the shops and cafes of the modest, compact town centre. Football has always sat at the heart of this proud, often understated community: it comes alive beyond recognition when things are going well. There has been little to sustain it in the past two decades but now its pulse is beating faster than at any point in memory.

If Ipswich Town secure a point or more against Huddersfield on Saturday lunchtime, their return to the Premier League will be confirmed. It is a prize that many in these parts, during darker moments, had given up hope of grasping again. They can earn it in front of a packed house at Portman Road, which remains one of English football’s most distinctive venues and has hit fever pitch over the past year. The continuation of a stunning season’s form would mean it is hosting some of the best players in the world a few months from now.

A giant image of Sir Bobby Robson gazes down from the stadium’s north-east corner. Robson and Sir Alf Ramsey, both immortalised in bronze a matter of yards away, made Ipswich an internationally known name in the second half of the last century. If this year’s vintage get over the line there may be calls for a third manager’s likeness to join them. Kieran McKenna has performed a miracle in guiding Ipswich from League One, where they had lingered for four years, straight to the sharp end of a brutal Championship promotion fight.

There appears little doubt that the 37-year-old McKenna, who swapped an assistant role at Manchester United for East Anglia in December 2021, is destined for great things. Ipswich’s majority owner, the US group Gamechanger 20, wants the same for a club that has risen from what seemed a terminal slumber. Since relegation from the top flight in 2002 they have, after a couple of attempts at a quick comeback, rarely looked likely to trouble the elite. A club that used to innovate, whether with top-quality foreign talent such as Frans Thijssen and Arnold Muhren or by producing a steady stream of academy talent in the 1990s, became poor relations in a sport that simply left it behind.

All that has changed since the Americans’ takeover three years ago but their rise is no triumph of money over method. While Ipswich were generously backed by third-tier standards they have had to battle the odds a division higher. Barely any outsiders expected them to last the course in an automatic promotion race against Leicester, Leeds United and until recently Southampton, all of whom could fuel their campaigns with Premier League resources.

View image in fullscreen

“We’ve travelled a long way,” reflected McKenna in a characteristically measured, collected press conference on Friday. “The jumps have probably been harder than they’ve looked from the outside. It’s not been easy and it’s taken a lot of work.” Ipswich went up with 98 points last season and have 93 going into the final day this time; they have lost 10 times in 91 league games. Nobody attains numbers like these by luck and the overriding feature is McKenna’s ability to coax new levels from a tight-knit core of players rather than simply seek upgrades.

Sam Morsy, the Ipswich captain, had been a respected Championship midfielder when Middlesbrough let him drop down to League One in 2021. When McKenna’s predecessor Paul Cook, who had persuaded him to rekindle a relationship that had thrived at Wigan, was sacked three months later he might justifiably have feared decline setting in. Now, at 32, he has become one of the division’s dominant all-rounders: a driving force with ox-like strength and the ability to set many of Ipswich’s intricate passing moves in train.

“We’ve had lads being written off while at the club, lads written off last season, this season, and everyone has slowly improved and got better,” Morsy said before his manager took the floor. “To get to a good place it’s about improving every day, working every day, it’s setbacks. That’s what the journey looks like, it’s never straightforward. So I’m really proud of the players.”

View image in fullscreen

Morsy leads a side that includes the cultured locally born defender Luke Woolfenden, who had been out in the cold under Cook. There are players like the rapid winger Wes Burns and the diminutive, johnny-on-the-spot No 10 Conor Chaplin, who have both answered any doubts about their ability to compete at the top of England’s most cut-throat league. The centre-back Cameron Burgess took time to become a first-choice pick after joining from Accrington Stanley but has become immovable and markedly more confident in possession. The 33-year-old Vaclav Hladky, who did not start a game in 2022-23 but now stands almost peerless among ball-playing goalkeepers, has enjoyed the most eye-catching ascent of all.

If Ipswich do have a star it is the attacking left-back Leif Davis, who has turned heads across Europe with 18 assists. Ipswich will probably be able to bankroll another tilt at promotion with any fee received for Davis in the event they fall short this time, such is his range of admirers. At this moment more than any other, Leeds supporters may be wondering exactly who signed off the deal for just over £1m that brought him from Elland Road in July 2022.

When Ipswich have paid fees under McKenna it has invariably borne fruit. They have also played the loan market adroitly: the 20-year-old Omari Hutchinson looked callow when he arrived from Chelsea last summer but, after flickering promisingly before Christmas, has exploded into one of the division’s best and most relentless attackers. His two long-range efforts in last weekend’s draw at Hull helped set a platform that was built upon on Tuesday night, when a 2-1 victory over Coventry brought them to within inches of the line amid delirious scenes among the travelling support.

View image in fullscreen

Now the job has to be finished. Under McKenna, Ipswich have been performance-driven and the stated aim for this season was simply to do as well as they could. Nobody at their training facility has accepted offers to look further than Saturday’s kick-off. “You could get into that and: ‘Wow, if I’d be a Premier League player and playing against Manchester City, and if I do that, that, and that,’” Morsy said. “But come Saturday you’d have no energy. I’m experienced enough to realise that.”

It is a message Morsy and McKenna will preach to the last. Barring an implausible 15-goal swing Huddersfield will be relegated at full time and their manager, André Breitenreiter, has not hidden his displeasure at some of his players’ efforts. The Terriers’ camp is not a happy one but Ipswich had to squeeze a late draw in the reverse fixture and their open style usually gives opponents a chance. There are enough slithers to give Leeds, who must beat Southampton to retain any hope of the top two, encouragement that nothing is over.

As before last season’s promotion clincher against Exeter, which may prove a mere dress rehearsal, thousands of Ipswich fans will cram surrounding streets and roar the team coach into the ground at 11am. “Of course there’ll be a special atmosphere,” McKenna said. “We know there’ll be a full stadium, people outside the stadium. They’ll be behind us and try to push us. We’ll try to use that.”

Even if things go wrong, and again they face a playoff campaign for which Ipswich would have to dig deeper than ever, the club can reflect on extraordinary progress. On Friday morning Mark Ashton, their indefatigable chief executive, visited Gusford primary school in the town’s south-western reaches: the sight that greeted him, an assembly packed full with cheering youngsters resplendent in their Ipswich shirts, would have been unthinkable three years ago. Colours of top Premier League clubs are now a rarity around town. A club whose decay lost a generation of supporters has learned from past mistakes and looks equipped for the future.

The champagne is on ice and tales are rife of ticketless supporters who will jet back from places such as Melbourne, New York and Dubai to immerse themselves in the occasion. Maybe the celebrity fan Ed Sheeran, currently stateside, will be tempted to drop in between engagements. These are moments that strike so rarely over a lifetime, but McKenna wants everyone swept along on an even longer journey.

“We want to make sure that, whatever happens at the end of the season, it’s no end point for Ipswich Town,” he said. Ipswich, so often a byword for old-world charm, are close to the cutting edge at last.