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.
The faithful have at least learned to enjoy Jack Clarke, top scorer with 14 goals and back to something approaching the peaks reached with Sunderland; they also have a player capable of the spectacular in Jaden Philogene, who would surely have overtaken Clarke’s tally without two months on the sidelines due to a knee injury.
The Dutch holding midfielder Azor Matusiwa has made them tick all season and, while unheralded outside Ipswich, has no equal in the division. If all are fresh enough to bring their best form to an absurd final stretch of five games in 13 days, the chances are Ipswich will edge over the line.
In the Championship, though, little is ever as it seems. “Everybody was hyping us up saying we should be here or there,” the Ipswich captain, Dara O’Shea, said last week. “The league doesn’t work like that.”
Just ask Southampton, who went down with Ipswich and promptly nosedived during Will Still’s doomed five-month tenure. They seemed a lost cause but are now the form team under Tonda Eckert, who has assumed McKenna’s old mantle as the league’s hottest young coach. Saints have not lost since 17 January and have belatedly made their entrance to the frantic dash at the top, closing the gap with Ipswich to just three points. While Ipswich have an extra game to play, the teams’ meeting at St Mary’s on 28 April – three days after the hosts’ FA Cup semi-final with Manchester City – suddenly looks tantalising.
With Coventry over the line it has coalesced into a four-team sprint for the remaining spot, third-placed Millwall still in with a resounding shout despite rocking when they briefly seemed to hold the initiative. None of those in the mix are immune to implosions, as Ipswich amply demonstrated at Fratton Park. The Championship’s lust for late chaos never goes unsatisfied even if logic, budgets and squad depth should ensure otherwise.
Perhaps Ipswich, almost unbeatable at home, will rebound against Boro and put the prize in sight. Or maybe their visitors, with or without Hackney, will help themselves and others with another sharp twist and further justify his decision to stay. Saints and Millwall can look on after Saturday’s winnable assignments against Swansea and QPR. “We know it’s in our hands, we understand that,” O’Shea said. The sureness of Ipswich’s grip will become clear very soon.