After maintaining a spot in the top two of the League One table for the first half of the season, picking up 48 points from their opening 23 outings, Ipswich Town now find themselves in a concerning run of form which has seen them fall behind in the fight for automatic promotion.
Since their final game of last calendar year, Kieran McKenna’s side have put just one more victory and seven more points on the board in six third-tier outings,
firstly playing out consecutive draws with Portsmouth and Lincoln City to drop behind Saturday’s opponents before being pegged back in the dying minutes of an important clash with Plymouth to see the game finish 1-1.
Following that run of draws, the Tractor Boys then met Oxford United and suffered a harmful defeat as Cameron Brannagan netted the decisive goal seven minutes from time, seeing
the Suffolk outfit drop further behind the new top two, before they bounced back in style with a 4-0 thrashing of Morecambe thanks to first-half braces from Freddie qLadapo and Conor Chaplin.
Aiming to build on that result and gain ground back on the Owls and Plymouth, McKenna’s side made the short trip to take on Cambridge United in their last league outing last weekend, but they again had to settle for a point after Ladapo drew them level in the second half, seeing the gap to the top two stretched to six points as a result.
Now on the back of a commendable effort away at Championship leaders Burnley in their FA Cup fourth-round replay, in which they narrowly lost 2-1 following an injury-time goal from Nathan Tella after George Hirst drew them level early
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in the contest, the Tractor Boys will turn all their focus back to the fight for a top-two finish in League One and will see it as imperative that they triumph on home turf at the weekend to cut the gap between themselves and the visitors back to three points.
Victories over Fleetwood Town, Port Vale and Cambridge United saw them finally break into the top two ahead of Saturday’s hosts, and Moore’s men further improved their position with 1-0 wins away at Wycombe Wanderers and in the reverse fixture against Fleetwood, before taking on Plymouth on home turf last weekend in their bid to move to the summit of the division.
Callum Paterson gave the Owls a crucial early lead in that contest, and they stood strong to see out the 1-0 victory and leapfrog the Pilgrims to move top on goal difference and six points ahead of Ipswich with a game in hand on both sides chasing their spot.
