It’s been coming I’d say, but, more than any other season, 23/24 is shaping up like the one where all three teams relegated to the Championship go straight back up and the three promoted teams return to the second tier.
Luton, who I thought were serious candidates to replace that Derby side from about twenty years ago as statistically the worst team ever to play in the Premier League, are, surely, the only one of the promoted teams with a chance of surviving and their results have taken a turn for the worse lately, so it’s beginning to look like only two things can stop the scenario I outlined in the first paragraph unfolding.
The first is that one of Everton or Forest get docked enough points for what I still call FFP irregularities and Luton clamber over them, while the second would see Ipswich, who came up into the Championship as League One runners up to Plymouth in 22/23, being able to break up the Leicester, Leeds and Southampton trio to make it into the top flight themselves.
That’s why I’ll be an Ipswich fan for the rest of the season, apart from tomorrow of course when they visit Cardiff City Stadium for a lunchtime kick off. With three straight wins behind them, it seems a good time for City to face the Tractor Boys, but then you realise that Ipswich have won their last six after something of a wobble around the turn of the year – realistically, you have to fancy an away win tomorrow, but maybe City can improve their miserable record against the top teams this season with a draw?
Here’s seven Ipswich related questions dating back to the sixties with the answers to be posted on here on Sunday.
60s. This midlands born player seemed to favour teams that played in white shirts throughout his long career, apart from the five years he spent at Ipswich. He made most appearances for his first club and as all of them would have been in the lower divisions, his move to Ipswich had to be seen as an upward step. For most of those five years, he was first choice, but when he did lose his place, it helped bring about a move to the capital. On the face of it, our man was again moving up the football pecking order, but, in truth, he had been signed very much as an experienced cover for someone who was never going to be dropped and so he only averaged one appearance a season for the three years he was there. His final move saw him turning out for a team which got its name back in the summer of 2023, but who is he?
70s. This player began and ended his career playing in his native county for the same team (although they had changed their name while he was away). His senior career lasted twenty years and the first six of them saw him totting up two hundred and thirty league appearances for his local team before moving to what is traditionally one of the coldest footballing locations in England as he swapped one Athletic for another. Ipswich was his next port of call and he was at Portman Road for six years – although not always a first choice, he clocked up over a hundred and sixty league appearances, all of them in the First Division. He next moved closer to home to represent a team which was failing to recapture former glories, but he’d moved back to where he started before they tumbled down to the fourth tier. Having spent his first half a dozen years with his first club, he spent the last five with them as well, although he was very much an understudy by this stage and only turned out twice in the league for them. Who am I describing?
80s. Kegs glisten on VE day. (5,8)
90s. Kiwi provides shelter for county.
00s. Which Ipswich player from this decade scored a hat trick in a Premier League win over Liverpool for his first club? He also had a loan spell at Norwich and later returned to Carrow Road to score twice in a huge away win.
10s. Present minor.
20s. Helen’s pet bird perhaps.
Ipswich answers
60s. Ken Hancock made well over two hundred appearances in goal for Port Vale before signing for Ipswich in 1964. Hancock passed four hundred career league appearances while at Portman Road and added three more when he was Pat Jennings’ understudy at Spurs before finishing with a couple of seasons at Bury – Bury’s phoenix club were given permission to change their name to Bury FC last summer.
70s. Dorset born David Best began his goalkeeping career with Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic in 1960 and then spent just over two years at Oldham before Ipswich signed him in 1968. Best was Ipswich’s first choice keeper for much of the next six years before he signed for Portsmouth in 1974, moving to AFC Bournemouth a year later where he stayed until 1980 and his retirement at the age of thirty seven.
80s. Kevin Steggles.
90s. Lee Norfolk became the first New Zealander to appear in the Premier League when he made his Ipswich debut against Southampton in 1995 – Norfolk played three more times for Ipswich before dropping into non league football.
00s. Kevin Lisbie scored all three goals in Charlton’s 3-2 win over Liverpool in 2003. He played for Ipswich between 2008 and 2011 and, while on loan to Colchester, scored twice for them in a 7-1 win a Carrow Road, Norwich on the opening day of the 09/10 season.
10s. Grant Ward.
20s. Troy Parrott.
