It’s still early days, of course, but this has the potential to be a season-shaping week for Ipswich Town.
After a frustrating eight-game winless start across all competitions, last weekend’s gritty, professional and ultimately fully-deserved 1-0 win at Lincoln City released a whole load of tension.
The question is, can the Blues now kick on and quickly start undoing some early damage?
Two home games in the space of four days – Sheffield Wednesday today, followed by rock-bottom Doncaster on Tuesday – certainly presents a golden opportunity for this new-look squad to fully win the hearts and minds of supporters
and send a statement out to the rest of the league.I always refer back to 2014/15 as an example of how powerful the home double header can be.
Town beat Millwall (2-0) and Brighton (2-0) in quick succession at Portman Road in September. They then sent both Wolves (2-1) and Watford (1-0) away from Suffolk
with their tails between their legs in the space of five November days. And they repeated the trick against Blackpool (3-2) and Cardiff (3-1) in April on the way to a Championship play-off finish.
Mick McCarthy’s men also beat Sheffield Wednesday and Burnley in back-to-back home games inside the opening month of the following campaign. It meant that, in the space of 12 months, the Blues had claimed maximum points from four out of five home double headers.
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Do you know how many times it’s happened since then? Just once… from 24 attempts.That was last season and, even then, the unconvincing 1-0 wins against Gillingham and Crewe (October) didn’t exactly capture the imagination.
Four points from a home double header is also a decent haul. Since the start of 2016/17, that has happened just twice though (1-1 v Birmingham and 3-0 v Wigan in April 2017; 1-1 v Lincoln and 1-0 v Plymouth in March 2021).
