The Championship is a very difficult league to get out of. Just ask Ipswich Town, who have been consistently in the same league since 2002. At that point, the club were in serious financial difficulties and it has taken a long time for the club to find its feet once again. Since then, arch rivals Norwich City have been promoted, relegated, relegated again, promoted twice and relegated once again, whilst Ipswich have barely troubled the top six bar in 2004, where they reached the play-off semi-finals. One way to get out of this league is to spend like crazy, and hope that your efforts are good enough, as Queens Park Rangers did last season, but another way is to take Burnley’s approach of not spending, and this worked pretty well for them last year, gaining automatic promotion to the Premier League. Ipswich is looking to make their way back to the top flight of English Football by spending barely any money at all on transfers.
During the Roy Keane era, Town were heading into a very swift decline. The results were pretty poor, the signings were also poor, and a lot of loan players were brought in, some of them being paid extortionate wages. Things hardly improved in the Paul Jewell era, and within the space of 24 months, Town had uncharacteristically gone through five different managers, including two caretakers. The fifth of these managers is also the current one – Mick McCarthy. Having dragged Ipswich from rock bottom of the Championship well into safety in 2013, a fight for the top six was part of the plan in 2014, but the team narrowly missed out, but it was their best result for years. At the same time, McCarthy not only rebuilt the squad effectively from scratch, but he also reduced the wage bill significantly too.
The hard-working style of play that McCarthy brings isn’t necessarily the most exciting of styles, but from this, it generally yields decent results, and at the end of the day, that’s the most important thing. One thing that McCarthy has done excellently is bring in players for absolutely nothing or for very little, with players including David McGoldrick (free), Tyrone Mings (£10,000), Dean Gerken (free), Stephen Hunt (free), Cameron Stewart (free), former Borussia Dortmund striker Bálint Bajner (free), former Blue Darren Ambrose (free) and the most recent signing Jack Collison formerly of West Ham (free)and so many others all being taken under McCarthy’s helm and either turned into a top class Championship player, or showing the potential to be. Also despite losing Aaron Cresswell to West Ham for approximately £4 million, he didn’t panic about losing arguably the best player in the squad last season, instead he is giving young talent a chance to show their stuff, and they’re certainly delivering so far.
Town are on a streak of wins at the moment, they appear to have found their sweet spot. They are currently just outside of the play-offs and just four points behind table-toppers Nottingham Forest in the early stages of the season. With this league being the ‘crazy league’ as described by McCarthy, it almost seems as if over half of the teams have a realistic shot at promotion this year, and the hard-working tactics will take their toll on the players towards the end of the season, but the Irishman is incredibly intelligent and will without a doubt make the right signings over the winter to bulk his squad further. I think that the arrival of Mings as a suitable replacement for Cresswell as well as fellow defender Jonathan Parr showing great promise has already proven to be a major plus for McCarthy, as the two have integrated themselves into the first team almost instantly. I believe that once Collison is match-ready, he will be one to watch as well, and I look forward to seeing how McCarthy puts him into the team. Despite this, while I don’t believe that Town have the best side in the league – far from it, I do believe that they have at the very least a really solid squad. Injuries and form will be the determining factor as to whether they can finally crack the top six, or even the top two or not this year. If not, they can already take some positives and build even further on what structure they have already for 2016.
It will be incredibly tough for Ipswich to get out of the Championship without breaking the bank, I fully understand that, but breaking the bank does not always yield success; just look at Fulham, languishing at the bottom of the table despite having spent far, far more on one player than the entire Ipswich squad cost the club. However, there are teams willing to buck the trend of buying their way out of this league, and I believe that is a really good thing in a football world which has a lot of problems with money at the moment. I’m all for this sort of approach into football, relying on home-grown talent and some very clever purchases (if you can even call them purchases) to gradually make the way up the football ladder, rather than a businessman from some oil-rich state coming in and throwing money at a team and expecting to walk away with trophies all of a sudden.
Craig Woollard is a motorsport editor for Last Word On Sports. For race-by-race previews and reviews as well as opinion-based articles on Formula One and more, head here.
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