Title favourites Ipswich are currently 12th after a start that has included a manager of the month award, and 3-0 home defeat to Charlton. With Celtic interest rumoured in manager Kieran McKenna, we asked Phil Ham from our sister site TWTD for the latest from Portman Road.

A first Premier League campaign since 2002, but straight back at the first time of asking. How was it?

Last season was chastening. The Premier League has changed an awful lot in 22 years and quickly it became evident we were in for a battle. We thought we were getting to grips with things at Christmas, beating Chelsea at Portman Road and coming within a couple of minutes of winning at Fulham, but after Wolves found Champions League form from February onwards, there was an acceptance that barring a miracle - or points deductions for financial infractions - we were going down.

I don’t think the recruitment was necessarily with a view to this season, but we certainly brought in players who were among the better performers in the Championship in 2023/24. Most of them are of an age where they can develop and then be sold on at a later date at a profit. However, too many of them failed to shine in the Premier League. Aside from Liam Delap, now at Chelsea, and Omari Hutchinson, who went to Forest, not too many of last year’s signings attracted interest from top-flight clubs this summer.

A lot of us really fancied Ipswich in the summer, but it's been a really stuttering start and you're currently 12th - what have you made of it so far?

I don’t think a stuttering start should be seen as entirely unexpected, it’s not uncommon for relegated Premier League sides to spend the first month or so of the season with their squad in a state of flux, and that was very much the case at Town.

There were a lot of comings and goings, fixtures in the side over the last few seasons, Sam Morsy, Massimo Luongo, Omari Hutchinson, Cameron Burgess, Luke Woolfenden and others, departing and new players coming in, quite a number of them late in the window. It’s still very much a squad in development.

Town in the league so far…
Birmingham 1-1 Ipswich Stansfield 55 – Hirst pen 90
Ipswich 1-1 Southampton Harwood-Bellis og 4 – Robinson 29
Preston 1-0 Ipswich Osmajic pen 11
Ipswich 2-2 Derby Greaves 33, Clarke pen 90 – Morris pen 50, Brewster 70
Ipswich 5-0 Sheff Utd Philogene 20, 51, 68, Hirst 61, Clarke 78
Ipswich 2-1 Portsmouth Philogene 9, Hirst 41 – Pack 90
Bristol City 1-1 Ipswich Atkinson 18 – Clarke pen 52
Ipswich 3-1 Norwich Kipre 32, Philogene 44, Clarke 77 – Schwartau 35
Boro 2-1 Ipswich Kipre og 45, Whittaker 55 – O’Shea 76
Ipswich 0-3 Charlton Carey 52, Gillesphey 55, Leaburn 64
Ipswich 1-0 West Brom Clarke 83

The team certainly looks to have all the talent it needs on paper - is it a Premier League hangover, more to it than that?

Indeed, it’s a more talented squad man-for-man but not yet always hitting the straps as a team. Town will get better over the course of the season, again as has often been the case with relegated Premier League sides back in the Championship.

Looking at your fixtures - QPR, Watford, Swansea, Wrexham, Hull, Oxford, Blackburn... it's time to get motoring now right? Could look very different in six weeks time…

It may well, although you can see most of those sides sticking everyone behind the ball and seeking to frustrate us, which we’ve tended to find tougher going than when facing teams who want to take us on, the defeats to Preston and Charlton being examples.

Is Kieran McKenna still revered, or are there question marks after the last 18 months?

Generally still revered, although there are one or two dissenting voices. I think most fans saw the extent of the task last season having come up two divisions and for the first half of the campaign at least the Blues were in most games, even if it was a case of hanging on a lot of the time.

There were a few more rumblings after the 3-0 Charlton defeat, our biggest at home at this level in more than seven years, but overall most see that given the turnaround in personnel it's going to take a little time to show our full potential.

What did you make of your summer transfer window? What was done and left undone?

I think there’s a general acceptance the club got its 2024 close season business wrong when going into the Premier League, chairman and CEO Mark Ashton said this summer that we’d be looking for a strong, more physical type of player going forward with an eye on a return to the top flight.

However, we did sign a number of players ahead of that campaign who were very good Championship performers, the likes of Jack Clarke, Jacob Greaves and Jaden Philogene, and that should benefit us this season.

I think the main issue with the business in the summer just gone was the lateness of many of the signings, four in the week before the transfer window closed, which was far from ideal. In addition, there were on-off deals, Hayden Hackney opted not to join us from Middlesbrough the clubs having agreed a fee, and players also moving on late in the window, so it was a fairly chaotic way to spend pre-season and the early part of the campaign.

Ins >>> Sindre Walle Egeli, 19, RW, Nordsjaelland (Denmark), £16m >>> Kasey McAteer, 23, RW, Leicester, £10m >>> Azor Matusiwa, 27, DM, Stade Rennais, £10m >>> Marcelino Nunez, 25, CM, Norwich, £8m >>> Darnell Furlong, 29, RB, West Brom, £3.5m >>> Jens Cajuste, 25, DM, Napoli, Loan (fee £1m) >>> Ashley Young, 40, RB, Everton, Free >>> David Button, 36, GK, Reading, Free >>> Cedric Kipre, 28, RGK, Stde Reims, Loan >>> Chuba Akpom, 29, CF, Ajax, Loan >>> Ivan Azon, 22, CF, Como, Loan

Outs >>> Omari Hutchinson, 21, AM, Forest, £40m >>> Liam Delap, 22, CF, Chelsea, £30m >>> Nathan Broadhead, 27, LW, Wrexham, £7.5m >>> Axel Tuanzebe, 27, RB, Burnley, Free >>> Cameron Burgess, 29, CB, Swansea, Free >>> Marcus Harness, 29, AM, Huddersfield, Free >>> Mass Luongo, 32, CM, Millwall, Free >>> Sam Morsy, 33, CM, Kuwait SC, Undisclosed >>> Luke Woolfenden, 26, CB, Coventry, Undisclosed >>> Chiedozie Ogbene, 28, RW, Sheff Utd, Loan >>> Conor Chaplin, 29, AM, Portsmouth, Loan >>> Arijanet Muric, 26, GK, Sassuolo, Loan >>> Ali Al-Hamadi, 23, CF, Luton, Loan >>> Cieran Slicker, 22, GK, Barnet, Loan

Where is the team strong and weak?

We’re very strong in attack, even if there are a number of our forwards who are in need of a goal at the moment, but we’ve been vulnerable on the counter-attack recently, notably against Boro and Charlton. There was also a surprising lack of mental strength in the defeat to the Addicks - Town going behind, then conceding two more very swiftly, something which hasn’t often been the case in recent seasons, the Premier League campaign aside.

Revised expectations for the season?

Some fans have, but ultimately I suspect it will be a typical Championship season with the relegated clubs growing and climbing the table over the course of the year and expect us to be in the shake-up at the very least. The division shows all the signs of being as closely fought/mediocre as ever and whether Coventry can maintain their impressive early season pace remains to be seen. The sceptic would say probably not, but they most likely said the same about us two years ago.

Links >>> Ipswich Town Official Website >>> Ipswich Star – Local Press >>> East Anglian Daily Times – Local Press >>> TWTD – Blog and Forum >>> Talking Town – Podcast

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TacticalR added 13:15 - Nov 1 Thanks to Phil. I agree that it's too early to say how Ipswich's season will pan out. In recent years the accepted wisdom has been that the teams relegated from the Premier League will automatically go back up, but we are seeing that it's not as simple as that (the most extreme case being Luton last season).
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