(R)

Get ready to tut sagely about naivety and furrow our brows about the growing gap between the top two divisions of English football, for it is finally here! The bracketed R that ends Ipswich’s meaningful participation in the Premier League. And, well, honestly, I am fine about it? We have all had a couple of months since that home loss to Southampton basically confirmed we would not be good enough. Plenty of time to work our way through the fabled stages of grief and arrive at acceptance.

With the usual mixed feelings that come from calmly acquiescing to defeat as a football supporter, I think I have arrived not just at acceptance that we failed but something resembling "the serenity prayer" that they print on Alcoholics’ Anonymous sobriety tokens.

"Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference".

There were things in our 2024-25 Premier League season that we simply could not change and that determined we were unlikely to stay up. Our shock promotion meant we came up without a single player who would start for any of the teams currently above us. After spending most of the last quarter century run on the cheap in the EFL, we had an inadequate global network of scouts, data analysts and agents from which to recruit effectively overseas, leaving us looking almost entirely at players known to us from English football. This meant acquiring players from lower divisions stepping up or paying through the nose for some of the young players hoovered up and monopolised by elite academies.

The Premier League itself accelerated this season. It was statistically faster and more intense than in previous editions, considerably more so than 2022-23, the last time promoted sides stayed up. Most of its clubs are less ineptly run than ever before, only three - West Ham, Man U and Spurs - managed to stuff up for the entire season and all of them are structurally too well-resourced to be serious relegation candidates. The Premier League's middle class has visibly expanded, with nominally “bottom half clubs” reinforced and upskilled.

Even if we had somehow assembled a squad capable of staying up, having near enough the worst injury record in the league would have relegated us anyway. 33 different line-ups in 34 games rendered us wholly unable to build the covalent bonds that might have made us more than the sum of our parts. By all logic 18th place is an over-achievement. Certainly, it was for the bookies, who would have had us red hot favourites for relegation in August, if not for a possible Leicester points deduction that never materialised. There is a solid argument to be made that Kieran McKenna has actually overachieved by two places.  

For sure, not everything was out of our control (what we could have done differently will be a future blog), but the things we could change would surely not have bridged the chasm between us and 40 points, the division's likely safety line. In the second half of the season we could have held onto every lead and we’d still be 9 points from safety. No alternate recruitment strategy, no tactical adjustment, no player selection ordinarily gets us there. Like the Avengers battling Thanos, in 14,000,605 futures, to me it seems like we defeat the Premier League in only one.

In a way it feels defeatist to look on the bright side. Like the 2002 banner declaring that "we shared the glory, we felt the pain, we're right behind you, we'll be back again" and singing "three little birds" at Portman Road on the final day in 2019, resilience in adversity can sometimes mutate into complacency. Yet it does feel different this time. We remain on an overall upward curve, with the last two seasons having bumped us back into the category of clubs that can meaningfully compete for second tier supremacy without requiring a miracle.

We could very easily have decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater and, like so many clubs before us, ditched a manager we knew to be good for the club long term and rolled the dice on someone more experienced and more "pragmatic". That we haven't done so is pitched in some quarters as a sort of admirable, but ultimately foolhardy, commitment to principle and loyalty. However, it is simply a realistic evaluation of the situation. Give our group to a normal manager and I suspect par performance would have been last place and perhaps an embarrassing tilt at Derby County’s record low points total. Parting company with McKenna has never been a serious discussion in Suffolk. Excellent managers who fit their club are a rare thing and letting one go so you can cycle through appointments and hope to get lucky again is a fool's game.

Throughout our disappointing season McKenna has conducted himself well and continues to be a comforting presence even in the worst circumstances. I have little doubt that he will be a huge asset to us next season and, from his recent media statements, I think the chances of him going elsewhere are slim.

Not all the players we acquired over the Summer have worked out in the Premier League, but our permanent additions - Alex Palmer, Ben Johnson, Conor Townsend, Dara O'Shea, Jacob Greaves, Sam Szmodics, Jack Clarke, Jaden Philogene, Omari Hutchinson, Chieo Ogbene and Liam Delap - should constitute a significant upgrade in the individual quality and value of our playing staff as compared to the last time we confronted the Championship. We will surely lose some but the club has given no indication that there is financial pressure to do so. They will either form the basis of an excellent second-tier side or should leave for good prices that enable us to source replacements. Even Delap-style "double your money" relegation clauses would represent decent protection for the rest of our new assets.

Whilst it might be a big ask to expect the class of 22-24 to repeat their “lightning in a bottle” heroics from last season, many of them should come out better players after the experience of competing with the world's elite. Having experienced the speed and athleticism of the Premier League, the Championship next season will feel like slow motion football. They will also benefit from the support of the newer acquisitions and likely further reinforcement in the Summer. This is not like in 2018-19 when we were relegated after years and years of slow decay from under-investment, with a useless owner and manager, dwindling crowds, mostly unpopular players and amidst furious infighting. The opportunity to resume our upward curve is right in front of us, there to take.

As Luton Town will tell you that next step will not come easy and there will be pitfalls along the way, not least the heightened expectations of likely being favourites to win the division. It is never nice to dwell on failure for a whole Summer and always tough to rebuild momentum. Yet, for me, it feels a tolerable relegation. More than a collapse and surrender, this is a retreat in good order in the face of insurmountable odds, ready to regroup, reinforce and mount a further offensive down the line.