IPSWICH TOWN HEADED BACK TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP LEAGUE :/

6/1/2025 - The ITFC season started with a lot of hope and promise. A mostly young squad, with a few veterans just up to the Premier League with Eddie Sheeran in support. In late August 2024, the world was the Tractor Boys' oyster. 

The moment that seemed to repeat itself with alarming regularity was late game collapses. I can remember Muric letting up late opportunities to Man City and Southampton specifically that simply cost us points. He also did not kick the long ball and stats will bear it out that we were playing roughly 70% of games in our end. We often passed back to a goalie with the attention span to play 80 minutes and limited footwork (he did make some saves, but that's only part of the game). As a team we constantly played the short ball. Here's a good Muric blooper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMSB-kJKm1Y

Things started to unwind pretty quickly towards the end of calendar year 2024 with only a few points at home and Sammie Szmodics sidelined with an ankle injury. Our top scorer, Liam Delap, took a couple / few months off from scoring and relegation was staring us in the face. We lost or tied a series of "must win" games. 

We will lose some players with "relegation trade" causes in their contracts. We can only hope that Hutchinson, Enciso, Burgess, Clarke, Morsy, et al.  make it back to Portman Road for the 2025-2026 season. Now that a core team has some Premier League minutes, the hope is that the Boys can keep up a level of play to be promoted in 2026. Hopefully we spend some time on basic conditioning, so players can run for 90+ minutes. We look forward to the announcement of the 2025/26 Championship League fixtures on 6/26/25. 

There are only a couple of months between seasons as the Championship League kicks off in early August. We will be following all of the ITFC action at Area Bar with the sound on! Come have a pint and cheer them on! We will also play Premier League, Championship League and World Cup with a first in the bar, first pick to put it on a screen. 

Come on ya Boys!