Ipswich in promotion driving seat but little is ever as it seems with Championship

At the end of July, Ipswich and Middlesbrough reached an agreement. If the Boro midfielder Hayden Hackney agreed personal terms he could join the Suffolk club, freshly relegated and awash with ready funds, for a Championship record fee of around £20m. Kieran McKenna knew he would be getting the best schemer in the division if his target said yes; a player who could make the difference in a 46-game grind. Perhaps with half an eye on Premier League interest, Hackney heard Ipswich out but turned the transfer down. He would end up staying on Teesside and propelling an often exhilarating promotion chase.

There is little chance of a mutually beneficial outcome when the sides meet at Portman Road on Sunday. Hackney has missed the past four games with a calf injury and it is unclear whether he will be ready in time for a game of potentially seismic consequence. Boro, out at the front with Coventry for so much of the season, have faded without their talisman and drifted to fifth. Their hosts, slow starters but menacingly consistent since September, occupy second place and have played a game less. Goal difference also works in Ipswich’s favour and the equation is simple: Boro must become one of vanishingly few visiting sides to win in Suffolk if they are to retain realistic hopes of going up automatically.

Yet the pressure will be felt all over Ipswich’s packed, expectant home. On Tuesday night McKenna’s side, hoping to profit from a twice-rearranged game in hand at Portsmouth, flopped to a 2-0 defeat against strugglers invigorated by their own shock win over Boro three days previously. Ipswich had gone into that game after winning at bitter rivals Norwich for the first time in 20 years; it meant 10 points from their final six matches would secure their return to the elite but that no-show on the south coast has given hope to those below.

It has been a curious season for Ipswich, even before one considers the furore over Nigel Farage’s visit that threatened to derail them last month. They stormed to stunning consecutive promotions, in 2023 and 2024, subsequently departing the top flight quietly, but their attempt to return to the Premier League was never going to be accompanied by the same sense of thrill and abandon. Nowadays, business supersedes pleasure when you are favourites to go back up.

That has been a difficult shift for many among their fanbase to compute and there have been murmurs of frustration that, rather than sweeping aside all before them, they have tended to tick along quietly. Only four or five of the tightly bonded, much-adored unit that finished with 96 points two years ago are still squad regulars. The current brood are no rag-tag bunch of unlikely heroes: they cost around £100m to assemble and patience in their aberrations, glaring when they occur but hardly regular, has been limited.