Shrewd management and transfer dealings got Ipswich to the play-offs last year on a meagre budget, but can they ever go much further in these circumstances?

When Robert Green hooks his kick into the Ellerslie Road stand, or gets underneath it and skies it straight up in the air, or stays rooted to his line when he should spring forward and take pressure off his defence, he will occasionally respond to the moans, groans and terrified screams from the Loftus Road faithful by raising his index finger in the air. That’s either because he feels it’s his first mistake of the afternoon and we should cut him some slack, or because it’s his first mistake of the afternoon and goalkeepers should be allowed one free swing a match.

At this level, he’s often right. Obviously not against Forest, or Bolton, or Charlton, or Fulham, where his poor form cost us goals, but it is true that you get away with more in the Championship than you do the Premier League. Last week at Bristol City, eight minutes in, Rangers sent a routine backpass Green’s way — Christ on a tiny motorcycle you think they’d have learnt by now — and having made a mess of first the control and then the attempt to retrieve the situation the keeper presented it straight to City striker Jonathan Kodjia.

Now Kodjia is no slouch. He’s scored nine goals in 21 starts for a struggling City side this year, averaged better than a goal a game for Angers in France last term, and looked lively all afternoon. But here, with only the keeper and the ball between him and the goal, he was forced wide, the defence retreated, the chance was lost, and up went Green’s bloody index finger. As we know, most heartbreakingly from the Chelsea match in April, one slip like that in the Premier League, even when the duffed kick lands 35 yards from the goal, and it invariably ends up in the net.

It’s for that reason that Green has always struck me as one of those players who’s too good for this level, but not good enough for the one above. He’s barely living up to the former billing this season but there have been hundreds of players through time who’ve struggled to step up. Andy Thomson, for instance, was prolific for QPR in the Second Division but rarely scored in the First. Riccy Scimeca, Nigel Quashie and Neil Redfearn clocked up the Premier League relegations — ten between them — in the late 1990s and early 2000s as they were too good to drop down a division with their relegated teams but only good enough to be signed by other teams likely to be relegated.

With players, particularly at the very front and back of teams, that’s understandable. Strikers, particularly poacher-types like Thomson or Billy Sharp bringing this a little more up to date, find fewer mistakes made by defenders, fewer balls dropping in dangerous areas, less time for them to get a shot away the higher they go through the divisions. It’s why Charlie Austin’s 18 goal haul in the Premier League was so remarkable. Defenders and goalkeepers, for their part, may get away with a slip or a mistake in one division, but find a sharper marksmen less forgiving the level up.

But does this all apply to managers as well? Neil Warnock has won seven promotions from the second tier in this country, most recently with QPR in 2011, but hasn’t had much, if any, success in the division above — although most would now accept QPR were wrong and hasty to dismiss him when they did in early 2012. Ian Holloway, too, has struggled in the top flight with Blackpool and most recently and notably Palace despite doing very well in this league with QPR, Plymouth, Blackpool and the Eagles.

Which brings us, 600 words and six paragraphs into what is ostensibly this week’s profile of our next opposition, Ipswich Town, to Ipswich Town. Mick McCarthy, their current manager, has shown himself highly adept at managing in this division. He’s been promoted from it with Sunderland and Wolves, and was well on the way to doing the same with Millwall in 1996 when they were, infamously, top at Christmas when he left to join the Republic of Ireland then somehow ended up relegated. At Ipswich too, while operating on a tight budget using mainly free transfers and loans, he took them to the play-offs last season in a division that is increasingly filling with big hitters as Derby and Middlesbrough step up their efforts and teams come down from the Premier League with ever-growing parachute payments.

But in the Premier League, he has struggled. He escaped blame for Sunderland’s first relegation, having arrived midway through the season to replace Peter Reid, but still lost all nine of his games in charge to leave them with what was, at the time, a record-low total of 19 points. Having stormed straight back, he then won just two of his 28 matches in charge and was sacked with them 16 points away from safety in early March. At Wolves too, albeit after surviving in the first season, he spent a decent wedge of money on the team for the second term and was sacked with them well on the way to finishing dead last.

There’s a feeling, exacerbated by his demeanour and northerness, that he’s distinctly Championship. A man to steady your ship and turn it towards Treasure Island, but not the one you want once you’ve made shore. Ipswich, therefore, are about the most typical Mick McCarthy team ever built — costing next to nothing, good enough to reach the play-offs but go no further, now into a fourteenth consecutive season in the second tier.

He would, I’m sure, point to plenty of other extenuating circumstances. Without going quite to Harry Redknapp levels of dismissing the manager’s influence entirely unless a team has good players and Crouch and Defoe upfront, could McCarthy really be held that responsible for the demise of Sunderland and Wolves? He got them there in the first place, and in Wolves’ case kept them up for a year. Neither they, nor certainly Sunderland, have done anything without him and plenty of other supposedly bigger names, Premier League bosses, foreign luminaries and nut cases have been through the Stadium of Light and failed even more dramatically than he did.

At Ipswich, in many ways, for him personally if not the club, he arrived at the wrong time. Owner Marcus Evans was already owed £72m by the club before McCarthy got there but that cash had been spunked on transfer fees and wages under the watchful eye of Jim Magilton, Roy Keane and Paul Jewell — Hogan Ephraim’s insight into Magilton’s management on this week’s podcast rather summing up what a daft idea that was.

McCarthy has taken over during a time of financial prudence, and careful adherence to the league’s FFP regulations. Soccerbase has their spend at £0 for the last three seasons, although there were a few undiscloseds among the arrivals. They’ve also fetched in the thick end of £8m for Tyrone Mings, a player McCarthy signed out of non-league for £10,000 and a friendly game.

Without going all 'Sam Allardici' on you here, who's to say McCarthy wouldn't do better given better resources. If he ever was given the chance at a Liverpool or Arsenal-type club why wouldn't he win things? The ludicrousness of the notion probably gives you your answer, but if he'd had Evans' £72m - not all of which was spent on players mind you - who's to say Ipswich wouldn't now be established in the Premier League?

Mind you, McCarthy himself says he’s not sure how much better the incoming players would be if he did have ‘some’ money to spend, given that the better Championship players — Austin, Phillips, Johnson, Downing, Nugent — move around for in excess of £4m these days anyway.

But still, I wonder if we’re moving towards a point where a manager will be sacked by his club immediately after winning a promotion. Watford, currently seventh in the Premier League and a point shy of the Champions League places, didn’t renew Slavisa Jokanovic’s contract as manager in the summer despite winning promotion, choosing to bring in Quique Sanchez Flores to great effect instead.

Flavio Briatore, before he went completely bananas and decided he wanted to pick the team himself, apparently had this ideal in mind for QPR. A survival specialist (Luigi De Canio) to stave off a Championship relegation threat at first, a promotion speciliast (Iain Dowie) to get them moving up the division, then a Premier League manager (he ludicrously talked about Arrigo Sacchi and Marcelo Lippi during his more ‘relaxed’ moments) if/when we eventually got there.

In the meantime, Ipswich look well set to basically do exactly as they did last season, thankfully without the morale-sapping, ball-aching prospect of local rivals Norwich lying in wait in this year’s play-offs.

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TacticalR added 22:26 - Jan 6 Thanks for your oppo profile. The idea of different managers for different divisions (like the idea of different players for different divisions) is not as absurd as it seems, since the Premiership is an international league and the Championship is a national league. In fact there seem to be a lot of managers who fit into the 'Mick McCarthy category': Neil Warncok, Nigel Atkins, Paul Lambert, and Chris Hughton to name a few. It will be interesting to see if any of the younger coaches like Eddie Howe or Paul Clement can break the mould.

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