How Ipswich Town made big-money gamble pay off with back-to-back promotions

There’s always a team or two who start the Championship season like a rocket before inevitably dropping away, and you can usually pick them out by looking at the statistics behind their performances. Simply put, sometimes you just get a bit lucky, putting away chances at an unsustainable rate while the opposition waste all of theirs.

Plenty of people thought that’s what Ipswich would be after they started the season so well, but the numbers told a different story.

When I looked at the Tractor Boys’ form before they visited Huddersfield Town in September, it was clear that Preston North End were this year’s impostors; Ipswich, meanwhile, were the real deal, posting stats to rival or even exceed Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton.

Ipswich Town success built on spending big but spending well

But you can understand the scepticism. Back-to-back promotions from League One to the Championship are vanishingly rare: only four other sides have done it since the Premier League was founded in 1992, the last of whom (Norwich) did so 12 years ago.

That job has only got harder since then. The Premier League TV deal that came into effect in 2019 increased parachute payments, newly-relegated clubs have dominated the promotion race, going back up after just one or two years in the second tier somewhere between two and three times more often than they were previously.

So for Ipswich to have pulled it off is a remarkable achievement – especially in light of the fact that most of their squad was assembled when they were still a League One club.

Make no mistake, Ipswich have spent money to put that team together. Their wage bill in League One last season, quoted in their accounts at £19.8m, was higher than either of the Championship’s two play-off finalists that season (Luton £17.8m, Coventry £15.7m).

That those two were finalists despite having the fourth and fifth lowest wage bills in the second tier last season may have been an oddity, but it nonetheless tells you about the level of investment that has gone into taking Ipswich into the Premier League.

Ipswich’s most recent accounts show losses of £18.2m last season, £12.6m the year before, and predict that ‘in the absences of any player trading, losses may increase further as the club looks to compete in the Championship’.

If that had continued – if Ipswich had not gone up at the first time of asking – things could potentially have become more difficult for them: the constraints of FFP's allowance of losses up to £39m over any three year period could have bitten them.

But current owners Gamechanger 20, who took over in April 2021, gambled and won, reasoning that throwing money at the team in League One would be worthwhile if it gave them a squad that could ride the high of one promotion into another.

We highlight that with no cynicism, but purely for context. Finances were never really a particular issue for Ipswich even as they fell into League One under former owner Marcus Evans, who pumped over £100m into the club over his 14 years in charge, most of which he wrote off before selling to Gamechanger

Their problem, really, was where that money was spent. Poor managerial appointments led to dull football and poor results, while the club’s recruitment perpetually left them with a squad that had little resale value that could then be reinvested into better and better players – something Brentford and Brighton showed can be absolutely vital in building a Premier League-ready squad.

This Ipswich is different primarily because for all they have spent a lot of money – far more even than under Evans – they have also spent it exceptionally well.

Their previous underperforming squad was thoroughly demolished by Paul Cook and then rebuilt so superbly in League One that Ipswich only needed four new permanent signings last summer. One of them, Cieran Slicker, was a young goalkeeper whose only two outings were both in the League Cup, and another of whom, George Hirst, was a loan from Leicester City made permanent.

Three Premier League loanees were brought in during the summer, but of that trio, only Omari Hutchinson was able to establish himself as a regular. Further recruits were brought in in January to shore up their promotion credentials, but Ipswich were already sitting pretty towards the top of the table by that point.

Importantly for the fans and for team spirit, the football has also been exciting. Nobody else in the Championship scored more goals than their 92, nor had as many shots as their 719.

No other team has got close to their incredible record after going behind, with 32 points rescued from 22 losing positions. They are the only Championship side who have actually won more games than they have lost after going behind.

And it is attractive: patient, but purposeful and never sterile. Not built around any one star player, but with every player doing their part to the kind of meticulous perfection that manager Kieran McKenna has made his hallmark. Their brilliant passing goal against Coventry in December, capped by a somewhat spectacular finish, was the apotheosis of everything they have aimed to be this season.

Watch that one goal, and you will instantly understand why Ipswich are now a Premier League club far better than anything else that can possibly be written.

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