After the Goals: Ipswich’s Next Challenge | Football Blog

Ipswich Town’s barnstorming rise from League One to the Premier League in just 24 months will likely be remembered most of all for the sheer volume of goals scored by Kieran McKenna’s rampaging blues. In just 92 games en route to the top flight, the Tractor Boys ploughed 193 goals.

Incredibly, their tally during the 2022/2023 campaign of 101 goals saw the Portman Road side outscore every other club in the country. Looking back, it was a heart-stopping, adrenaline-fuelled ride to the Premier League, leading many to wonder if it could continue against superior opposition. 

Changing Times 

While the clocks have only just gone back, the reality is that more mundane times have returned to East Anglia with only struggling Crystal Palace scoring fewer (5) than Ipswich (6) as of early November. 

Intriguingly, however, in Palace’s case, the prediction is that the Eagles will soon soar as the latest English Premier League betting odds for relegation price the Selhurst Park side at 10/3 to go down.

Worryingly for Ipswich, those same Premier League relegation odds list the Suffolk side at 4/7 to make an immediate return to the Championship.

In other words, the Eagles are expected to find their way out of this relegation tailspin they find themselves in, while Ipswich are tipped to be brought down to earth with a bang after two seasons of flying high.

While the Blues might be odds on for relegation, are there any underlying numbers that could distort this gloomy prediction? 

Ipswich Getting What They Currently Deserve 

This is the part where it might be advisable for Ipswich fans to look away because the short answer is no.

At least, if we were to refer to the table that ranks teams in order of how many times they’ve hit the woodwork during the 2024/2025 season, we would see Bournemouth in first place having hit the woodwork six times in eight matches.

To that end, the Cherries have scored ten goals in their eight fixtures but have an xG (expected goals) of 14.28 which suggests that Andoni Iraola’s men should be far higher up the league than their current position of 11th.

However, while there will be frustration on the South Coast at perceived bad luck, this table also offers hope that if Bournemouth keep doing what they’re doing under their Spanish manager, they will soon get their just rewards. 

Ipswich are in 16th-place, having only hit the woodwork once this season. Moreover, the Blues have scored six goals with an xG of 6.27 after eight games, indicating they are performing as expected and shouldn’t be scoring more than they currently are. 

Of course, while this ominous data doesn’t point to the shackles coming off soon for Ipswich, McKenna won’t abandon his high-intensity 4-2-3-1 system which laid the foundations for the Blues’ mountain of goals over the last two years. 

Familiarity Breeds Success?

It might be a case of Ipswich arriving late to the party as McKenna signed 12 new players in the summer as he set about trying to replace a side that was in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.

This will be the fervent hope of every Ipswich fan, having waited 22 years to return to the Premier League. If the Tractor Boys are to cultivate their success over the last two years and not return a barren harvest, they will need to start scoring soon.