Fewer teams have started the summer as positively as Ipswich Town, who’ve completed five signings already. But League One is no walk in the park and promotion isn’t the be-all and end-all of their 2021/22 season.
This time two years ago, Ipswich were gearing up for League One after seeing a 17-year stint in the second-tier of English football come to an end. In fact, at the start of that 17 year period the Tractor Boys were in Europe, competing in the 2002/03 UEFA Cup tournament via the UEFA Respect Fair Play ranking.
They’d go on to make the Division One play-offs in their first two seasons in the second-tier but failed to make the final on both occasions, having achieved a top-six spot in the Championship just once since then. That came in the 2014/15 season but four years on from that, Ipswich Town would finish rock-bottom of the Championship and thus begin their League One voyage.
Last season, Paul Lambert was ousted from his position at Portman Road. His tenure had become stale and the club felt time for a complete makeover from dugout to boardroom – Lambert was dealt his parting orders at the end of February and Paul Cook was installed soon after the start of March, with the club’s reported £40million takeover going through in April.
Since, the club has set about rebuilding their fortunes. They’ve made positive waves in the transfer market so far having signed all of Wes Burns, Lee Evans, Vaclav Hadky and Rekeem Harper, with Macauley Bonne joining on loan from QPR for the season too.
More signings are expected as well, with Portsmouth boss Danny Cowley recently stating that Ipswich have made contact with Pompey midfielder Michael Jacobs. With a promotion-experienced boss in Cook at the helm and signings flocking through the doors, it’s easy to get carried away and out Ipswich Town as the League One contenders that they undoubtedly will be ahead of the 2021/22 campaign. But League One is a league growing in competition and stature every season and it might yet take some time for Ipswich to break out of it.
Just ask Sunderland fans…
Sunderland and Ipswich – two historical British football teams plying their trade in the third-tier after some years of mismanagement, misspending and so on. Last season, Lee Johnson came into the club and had them looking good for an automatic promotion spot at one point. But that bid fell apart and so too did their eventual play-off bid, at the hands of eventual finalists Lincoln City.
Quickly after their second failed play-off push in three seasons in League One, Sunderland fans jumped on Johnson and reports emerged that he was on the brink of being sacked. Those reports were quickly hushed by Black Cats owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus but the fiasco paid homage to the trials and tribulations of a ‘big club’ in League One, and the trauma that serial play-off offences can cause to a fan base.
Rome wasn’t built in a day
Expectations are understandably high at clubs like Sunderland and Ipswich Town where the fan bases are so large and the history so rich. But that same Sunderland case study goes to show that only in very rare cases do clubs drop into League One and not only secure their immediate return to the Championship, but stay there.
Ipswich are definitely on the right tracks to putting themselves back on the pedestal they belong. Cook is a hugely likeable character and a proven promotion-winner with the likes of Wigan Athletic and Portsmouth. The club is spending money once again and on exciting, young players like Harper. It’s a much brighter time to be an Ipswich Town fan and there looks to be Championship football waiting for them later down the line, but if that prospect isn’t next season then fans don’t need to threat – Rome was neither built nor rebuilt in a day.
