In Ipswich, businesses decorate their premises in blue and white, while passersby wish the hours pass by. Banners, flags, messages of good luck and the nervous tension of an underlying noise: there is only one topic of conversation in the shops and cafes of the modest, compact city center. Football has always been at the heart of this proud, often understated community: it comes alive beyond recognition when all goes well. There has been little to maintain this in the past twenty years, but now the pulse is beating faster than ever before.
If Ipswich Town secure a point or more against Huddersfield on Saturday afternoon, their return to the Premier League will be confirmed. It is a prize that many in these parts had given up hope of seizing again during dark moments. 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 reached a fever pitch over the past year. The continuation of the wonderful seasonal form would mean that the country will host some of the best players in the world in a few months’ time.
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A giant statue of Sir Bobby Robson looks down from the northeast corner of the stadium. Robson and Sir Alf Ramsey, both immortalized in bronze a few meters away, made Ipswich an internationally famous name in the second half of the last century. If this year’s vintage crosses the line, there could be calls for a third manager to join them. Kieran McKenna has pulled off a miracle by taking Ipswich from League One, where they were stuck for four years, straight to the sharp end of a brutal Championship promotion battle.
There seems little doubt that 37-year-old McKenna, who left an assistant role at Manchester United for East Anglia in December 2021, is destined for big things. Ipswich’s majority shareholder, US group Gamechanger 20, wants the same for a club that has risen from what seemed a terminal slumber. Since their relegation from the top flight in 2002, they have rarely looked like troubling the elite after a few attempts at a quick comeback. A club that innovated, either with top foreign talent like Frans Thijssen and Arnold Muhren, or by producing a steady stream of gifted youth products in the 1990s, became a bad relationship in a sport that simply left it behind.
That has all changed since the American takeover three years ago, but their rise is not a victory of money over method. Although Ipswich were generously supported by third-rate standards, they had to take the fight a division higher. Hardly any outsider would have expected them to hold out in an automatic promotion race against Leicester, Leeds United and, until recently, Southampton, all of whom could fuel their campaigns with Premier League resources.
“We’ve come a long way,” McKenna reflected at a typically measured, assembled news conference on Friday. “The jumps were probably harder than they looked from the outside. It hasn’t been easy and it has taken a lot of work.” Ipswich rose by 98 points last season and this time has 93 points for the final day; they have lost 10 times in 91 league games. No one achieves these kinds of numbers by luck, and the overriding feature is McKenna’s ability to coax new levels from a tight core of players rather than simply looking for upgrades.
Ipswich captain Sam Morsy was a respected Championship midfielder when Middlesbrough dropped him to League One in 2021. Then McKenna’s predecessor Paul Cook, who had persuaded him to rekindle a relationship that had thrived at Wigan, was sacked three months later. he could rightly have feared that decline would set 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 initiate many of Ipswich’s intricate passing moves.
“There were guys written off when we were at the club, guys who were written off last season and this season, and everyone has slowly improved and gotten better,” Morsy said before leaving the floor to his manager. “To get to a good place you have to improve every day, work every day, it’s adversity,” McKenna said. “This is what the journey looks like, it’s never easy. So I am very proud of the players.”
Morsy leads a side that also includes the cultured, locally born defender Luke Woolfenden, who had been left out in the cold under Cook. There are players like the speedy winger Wes Burns and the diminutive Johnny-on-the-spot No. 10 Conor Chaplin, both of whom have answered any doubts about their ability to compete at the top of England’s most cutthroat league. Center back Cameron Burgess took time to become first-choice after joining from Accrington Stanley, but he has become immobile and clearly more confident in possession. 33-year-old Vaclav Hladky, who did not start a game in the 2022/2023 season but is now almost unrivaled among ball-playing goalkeepers, has had the most striking ascent of them all.
If Ipswich have a star, it is attacking left-back Leif Davis, who has attracted attention across Europe with 18 assists. Ipswich will likely be able to fund another shot at promotion with the fee he receives for Davis, just in case they fall short this time, such is his legion of admirers. At this point, perhaps more than any other, Leeds supporters are wondering who exactly signed the deal for just over £1 million that brought him from Elland Road in July 2022.
When Ipswich paid fees under McKenna it has invariably paid off. They have also played nimbly in the loan market: 20-year-old Omari Hutchinson looked calm when he arrived from Chelsea last summer but, after showing promise before Christmas, has become one of the division’s best and most ruthless strikers. His two long-range efforts in last weekend’s draw in Hull helped create a platform that was built on on Tuesday evening as a 2-1 win over Coventry took them to within inches of the line amid frenzied scenes among the traveling support .
Now the job must be done. Under McKenna, Ipswich were performance driven and the stated aim for this season was simply to perform as well as possible. No one at their training ground has accepted offers to look beyond Saturday’s kick-off. “You could go into that and say, ‘Wow, if I were a Premier League player and I was playing against Manchester City, and if I do this, that and that,’” Morsy said. ‘But on Saturday you had no energy left. I am experienced enough to realize that.”
It’s a message that Morsy and McKenna will preach to the end. Barring an unlikely 15-goal swing, Huddersfield will be relegated full-time and their manager, André Breitenreiter, has not hidden his displeasure at the efforts of some of his players. The Terriers’ side are not happy, but Ipswich had to force a late draw in the reverse fixture and their open style usually gives opponents a chance. There are enough slithers to give Leeds, who need to beat Southampton to retain any hope of the top two, encouragement that nothing is over.
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Just as before last season’s promotion match against Exeter, which might prove to be just a dress rehearsal, thousands of Ipswich fans will spill into the surrounding streets at 11am and roar into the ground the team coach. “Of course there will be a special atmosphere,” McKenna said. “We know there will be a full stadium, people outside the stadium. They will be behind us and try to push us. We will try to take advantage of that.”
Even if something goes wrong and they face another play-off campaign that would require Ipswich to dig deeper than ever, the club can reflect on extraordinary progress. On Friday morning, Mark Ashton, their indefatigable headteacher, visited Gusford Primary School in the south-west part of the city: the spectacle that greeted him, a gathering full of cheering youngsters resplendent in their Ipswich shirts, would have been unthinkable three years ago. The colors of top Premier League clubs are now a rarity in the city. A club whose decline has lost a generation of supporters has learned from past mistakes and looks equipped for the future.
The champagne is on ice and stories are circulating of supporters without tickets flying back from places like Melbourne, New York and Dubai to immerse themselves in the occasion. Perhaps celebrity fan Ed Sheeran, currently in the United States, will be tempted to drop by between engagements. These are moments that are so rarely encountered in a lifetime, but McKenna wants everyone to be taken on an even longer journey.
“We want to make sure that whatever happens at the end of the season, it is not an end point for Ipswich Town,” he said. Ipswich, so often a byword for old-world charm, is finally almost leading the way.