Three Things – Ipswich Town
It’s getting tighter than a camel’s backside in a sandstorm for the remaining promotion place as Cardiff, Fulham and ourselves make the final push to try and join Wolves in the “Promised Land” (©Premier League/Sky TV marketing bull). Cardiff are in the box seats as it stands, still having a game in hand. Although by the time we all kick off on Saturday, Fulham may have leapfrogged into second having played play-off chasing Millwall on Friday night.
Basically, automatic promotion is out of our hands, and we will have a much clearer idea of our chances by 10pm on Tuesday when Cardiff and Derby have played their snow-postponed game in hand. We will all be on 44 games at that stage. Then the smart money must be on Cardiff (with Hull and Reading to play) or Fulham (Sunderland and Small Heath) rather than ourselves (Derby and Millwall), considering their points advantage. Stranger things have happened though.
Anyway, before all of that, we have a visit back to East Anglia, this time to Portman Road. We’ve been denied the chance to say farewell to Mick McCarthy as he’s already jumped ship – although he said he’d stand down at the end of the season, he’d obviously had a gutful of the Tractor Boys and bailed three games early. I don’t think he’ll be greatly missed in Ipswich, but he didn’t have a bad record – he got them to the play-offs as recently as 2015 and they finished 7th the year after.
They have nothing left to play for this season, so we really could do with them rolling over for us.
