Let the great Ipswich carve-up commence ...Middle East

With seven matches to go, Kieran McKenna has realised “it’s certainly more than likely on the balance of probabilities” Ipswich Town are on the first train to the Championship.

Theirs was a beautiful dream, but the Premier League has long since stopped having any time for dreams.

Trying to draw any solid conclusions from Ipswich’s season is messy and complex. They invested £130m in their first-team squad across last summer and January, but that squad still includes nine players promoted from League One in 2022-23.

They have been comfortably better than the other promoted sides, both of whom have spent most of the last decade in the Premier League but that has not been enough to keep them up.

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Why Ipswich Town deserve to go down

Their squad is the most cheaply assembled in the league at around £45m, but Transfermarkt estimates it is worth comfortably more than Leicester or Southampton’s.

That demonstrates smart recruitment and this squad’s potential, but also supports the pre-season hunch that if any team could avoid a Championship return, it would be Ipswich.

Since then, they have scored the 18th-most goals from the 18th-highest expected goals (xG) and conceded the 18th-most goals from the 19th-highest expected goals against. They have taken the 18th-most shots and shots on target, from the 16th-furthest distance from goal.

Combined, their goalkeepers have made the 18th-most saves of any team at the 15th-lowest save percentage, with joint-19th most clean sheets. Any argument they should be anywhere other than 18th just doesn’t hold water.

“We got promoted too quickly,” Mikey Pentti-Smith of the Blue Monday podcast tells The i Paper.

“I wouldn’t change how it happened for the world, but we did. One or two weak spots we had in the Championship team have just massively reared their heads in the Premier League.

“In the middle of the pitch and even the full-backs aren’t quite up to the physical standard of the opposition. We just weren’t able to overpower enough teams.”

And so perhaps the only obvious conclusion is this side neither underperformed nor overperformed. For McKenna, that damages his gilded reputation as a miracle worker, the nation’s most talked-about manager for a heady fortnight last May.

Ipswich made him one of the best-paid coaches in the Premier League for a reason: a genuine belief he could secure survival.

There are, as always, caveats to this season – not least a dreadful injury record, with five first-teamers out long-term, including both first-choice right-wingers. By December, only Brighton’s players had missed longer due to injury.

McKenna has named the same line-up in consecutive league matches once this season. Three goalkeepers have played more than five top-flight games. None of this helps.

But then neither does McKenna’s reticence to make substitutions early in second halves when it is abundantly clear they are required, a regular complaint among supporters.

Beyond this, Ipswich’s inability to weaponise Portman Road, where they have won just one league game all season, is something both McKenna and the club must review.

Ipswich’s new dream is that a Championship return will only provide an opportunity to solidify the foundations, to reinforce a base from which to go again.

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Southampton's reputation as a well-run club is dead

Sign more like Omari Hutchinson, Jaden Philogene and Jack Clarke. A £30m training ground renovation has been approved, designed with McKenna’s input and influence. Return to the mountaintop in 2026-27 prepared to maintain Premier League status, with a club ready to be there.

It’s a lovely idea, but it hinges on the premise the upstart disruptors will not be disrupted themselves. Reports have suggested that Liam Delap’s already reasonable £40m release clause drops to £30m on relegation. One thing that £30m certainly won’t do it adequately replace Delap.

Cameron Burgess has been linked with Girona and Clarke reportedly being monitored by PSV Eindhoven. Loanees Kalvin Phillips, Julio Enciso, Jens Cajuste and Ben Godfrey are unlikely to sign permanently in the Championship.

Axel Tuanzebe and Massimo Luongo are both out of contract this summer. Hutchinson might believe he’s done enough time in the Championship, with offers for Philogene, even after three months at the club, not impossible. This does not mean

Which brings us to McKenna. The i Paper understands his name is no longer so freely bandied around boardrooms, but that doesn’t mean interest has dissipated completely, as he is still linked with the Tottenham job.

“I’m hopeful we get him for another season, at least,” Pentti-Smith says.

“It’s one thing trying to replace your most dangerous player, which we will have to do, and then trying to replace the manager as well. It would be too much for us.”

Delap is likely to be the first domino to fall in the great carve-up of Ipswich Town. Who’s next?

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