Ipswich Town are making Championship history, standing out as one of the best-performing sides in the history of the division despite only winning promotion from League One last season.
Rivals fans are hoping that they'll fade away, but they've shown no signs of it so far. Is it still too early to talk about back-to-back promotions? Alex Jones looks at what they'll need to do to challenge for a place in the Premier League.
The points-per-game argument
The phrase ‘points-per-game’ [PPG] is enough to make most fans shudder, especially those who were in League One when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, like Ipswich were.
The Football League used PPG to decide the final league table for the 2019/20 season in the third and fourth tiers, meaning that they took the average amount of points that a team had accrued to that point (which was around 35 games in that season] to create their final standings.
The Blues finished 11th with a PPG of 1.44, seeing them comfortably miss out on the play-offs. If we multiplied that figure by 46 to see how many points they would’ve been expected to achieve over the course of the campaign, they would’ve accrued around 66 points.
It’s all a case of hypotheticals, but it can be used to spot a trend and plot how many points a team would be expected to accrue over the course of a season if they maintain their form. Ipswich have picked up 39 points from 16 games, giving them a PPG of 2.4375.
If they were to maintain their results over the course of the season, they’d finish with around 112 points, smashing Reading’s record-setting total of 106 from 2005/2006. Leicester City would do the same, while Leeds United would end up with around 89 points, showing the gap between the current top two and the chasing pack.
It all sounds great, but the wider context does change the reality of the situation. After all, 16 games is an incredibly small sample size. Ipswich have dropped just nine points all season, losing once.
They’re yet to play every team in the division and won’t have done so until Boxing Day. They’re yet to travel to Elland Road or face title-favourites Leicester, and the likelihood of them having a blip at some point during the season is quite high. Their start isn’t realistically sustainable, neither for themselves nor any other team.
What the PPG does show is that they should be there or thereabouts. Even with a dip in form, they’re capable of hitting incredibly high numbers this season, but what would they need to secure promotion to the Premier League?
The play-offs
Based on the mean average from the last 10 years, teams finishing in the top six need around 74 points. Some seasons, such as the 2014/15 campaign when Town earned a play-off spot, are much more competitive, with 78 points needed that season. Others, like last season, are the opposite, with Sunderland sneaking in on the final day with just 69 points.
The Blues would need around 35 more points to hit that average, which is pretty incredible seeing as they’ve accrued four more points than that after just 16 games. Ten wins and a handful of draws should be enough to get them there. On current form, they’ll hit that figure within 15 games, or by the time they host West Brom on February 10, 2024.
There are slim margins in the battle for the play-offs. The Black Cats finished sixth on goal difference last season, while Swansea City did the same in 2019/20. The average points total of teams who finished seventh is 71.8, meaning that the gap is rarely more than two or three points.
It’s a race that Ipswich won’t want to be caught up in – they have their eyes on a much bigger prize.
Automatic promotion
This is the big one.
The automatic promotion race looks fascinating this season, with Leicester and Ipswich leading the way by a healthy margin. The strongest contenders outside of them are Leeds and Southampton, who’ve just about kept within touching distance.
Aside from 2019/20, when West Brom were promoted with just 83 points, most automatically promoted teams hit high 80s or low 90s. The average across the last 10 seasons is 89.6, which is certainly achievable for the current top four.
Town would need to accrue around 50 points from their last 30 games, with a required PPG of 1.6 showing that they really need to keep on avoiding defeat, even if they hit a run of games where wins are hard to come by. That’s something that they’ve been good at doing so far this season, looking at their results against Huddersfield Town, Birmingham City and Rotherham United.
If Ipswich can win half of their remaining games, with a few draws sprinkled in here and there, then they’ll hit 90 points.
There is, however, a catch, and that’s the chasing pack. The top-end of the Championship is fiercely competitive, with three of the current top four boasting parachute payments and numerous top-flight players that they’ve kept hold of despite relegation. The only team who doesn’t fit that is Ipswich, who’ve done the opposite by coming up from League One.
Leicester have shown frightening consistency all season while Leeds and Southampton are finally starting to do the same. Sure, the latter two didn’t perform as well in the early stages of the season, but if they maintain their current levels, they could easily surpass the average points total needed for automatic promotion.
On average, the third-placed team in the Championship has finished on 85 points in the last 10 years, but the current top four could all surpass that by quite a way. The cushion that the Blues have built up ahead of the two teams below them will be vital, as it’ll be hard to better their points total between now and the end of the season.
That’s why Kieran McKenna will be desperate to focus on the way his side performs and the results they get. Leicester, Leeds and Southampton will inevitably churn out wins at a frightening rate, and Ipswich can’t rely on them slipping up given the quality at their disposal.
League title
This one is a pipe dream, isn’t it?
Perhaps, but given the fact that Ipswich are level on points with Championship leaders Leicester after 16 games, we still have to look at it. The average total of the league champions since 2013/14 is around 95 points, which both the Foxes and the Blues are expected to achieve fairly comfortably.
The reality is that, given the quality of the runners and riders in the promotion battle, 95 points may be what’s needed for the top two. Burnley won the Championship title with 101 points last season while Sheffield United finished second with 91. The league feels much stronger this season.
We can’t discount Leeds or even Southampton in this conversation, but Town will realistically need to better Leicester’s results between now and the end of the season to lift the league title in May. There’s no reason why they can’t, but it’s a huge ask, and it ultimately isn’t going to be the priority.
The verdict
Ipswich look to have a very realistic chance of winning automatic promotion and, while the sample size is small, the results so far back it up. They’ve been one of the top performing sides in the history of the division so far, which has seen the expectations shift fairly drastically.
Most supporters had eyes on a top-half finish, but it already seems unrealistic to say that the Blues will finish outside of the top six. A top-two finish seems to be a plausible aim, but no-one will be heartbroken if they end up missing out. Given the strength of the chasing pack, that’s certainly a possibility.
As ever, it’s vital to enjoy the ride. Yes, Town are absolutely in a promotion race, but until they’ve played everyone, it’s hard to properly assess their chances.
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