Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. This is club 82/92. The best way to follow his journey and read all of the previous pieces is by subscribing here
The one positive spin is that pride has not fully evaporated with hope. Throughout the first 10 minutes at Portman Road on Sunday, the Sir Bobby Robson stand chants together: “Blue and white army.”
When Arsenal score their first goal – and it has been coming – Ipswich Town supporters barely miss a beat. It is as if they are convinced that loudly proclaiming their support is the only way to suspend reality. If we keep on singing, this Premier League dream will never end.
Over the next hour or so, patience is tested and faith does become a little frayed. The talent gap to Arsenal cannot be bridged but you must at least try and do the basics half-right.
Ipswich fail to track runners and allow wingers to pass by with embarrassing ease. They concede four times and, for three of those goals, there are blue shirts just watching as if they are standing in the stands behind them.
As such, some audible despondency arrives that has been a long time in the making. The common consensus is that Ipswich have competed in most Premier League fixtures, but this is the fifth time in their last nine home games that they have conceded four goals.
Ipswich Town 0-4 Arsenal (Sunday 20 April)
- Game no: 86/92
- Miles: 268
- Cumulative miles: 16,761
- Total goals seen: 223
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: As someone who knows the amazing work done by the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, it gave me a tingle to walk along the stand named after him.
In the stairwell post-match, one season ticket-holder turns to another: “That got quite demoralising, didn’t it?” Relegation is coming, just as it has for four months.
The following morning, I chat to a couple of Burnley supporters who are wishing the nerves away ahead of a chance to confirm their automatic promotion back to the top flight, which happens later that day.
If you would anticipate great excitement at an immediate return to the big time, lower those expectations slightly. They celebrated the success of the moment, but the future? That’s more complicated.
You can see the reason for circumspection. Burnley have been relegated in each of their last two Premier League seasons and neither were much fun for fans. In the Championship, you feel the love again.
They aren’t stupid – they know that their club needs promotion for financial reasons. But emotions aren’t governed by balance sheets. “Can we keep the money and stay down here” is the majority view from this small sample size.
Last season, all three promoted clubs were relegated from the Premier League. This season, all three promoted clubs will be relegated, probably before April is out.
If Fulham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest all staying up in 2022-23 is an argument against any concern as a result, it is the lack of competitive balance since that makes you wince. This season’s three will get the lowest combined total in Premier League history. That pushes last season into second place.
There are good reasons to focus on individual cases in search of a hypothesis.
Certainly Leicester City losing their manager last summer didn’t help; nor did appointing a former Forest hero who played in an antithetical style as Enzo Maresca’s replacement and then betting the house on the untested Ruud van Nistelrooy.
At Southampton, Russell Martin’s possession at all costs conceded 63 goals in the Championship in 2023-24 – that didn’t replicate well after promotion.
For Ipswich, however, it’s a little different. They retained their head coach despite links to Chelsea, Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion, and he is heralded as one of the best of his peer group.
They spent £110m on new players, not with the intention of building for a second Championship promotion campaign but with the intention of sticking around. Without the watermarks of previous failure, Ipswich’s capitulation feels most instructive.
One theory is that recent failures have been exacerbated by tactical approaches that flirt between naivety and dogma. Martin and Vincent Kompany remained committed to their style despite it not working.
Luton Town came closest to staying up (with the fewest resources) by playing more direct and being physical. Promoted managers always talked about earning the right to play.
I wonder if that is best represented in home form, where those teams are more likely to try and attack opponents and get picked off. This season, the promoted three have played 50 home league games against the other 17 clubs and taken a measly 21 points. Last season it was 36 from 57. It’s getting worse.
Yet all that feels like window dressing compared to the elephant in the room. What we’re really talking about here is money and how the economics of England’s top two divisions pose questions after a rough couple of years for those looking to bridge the talent gap.
In the Championship, those who come down and receive parachute payments have an enormous advantage.
The principle of them is logical: it bars relegation and loss of broadcasting revenue precipitating an immediate financial emergency (or, as would be more likely, promoted clubs not spending much at all to avoid it and being uncompetitive every season). But it allows those clubs to retain players on Premier League contracts and thus have a significant competitive advantage in the lower division.
But what does that advantage actually mean when you go up? Last season, the three clubs promoted from the Championship took 97, 96 and 87 points respectively – all will come down.
This season, two clubs may still get to 100 points. But then the last six teams to get 90 or more points in the second tier have finished 19th, 20th, 19th, 20th and, almost certainly this season, 18th and 19th. Championship dominance counts for very little.
For those who vastly overachieve and come up without parachute payments, a different predicament. Ipswich have spent £110m on transfer fees this season. That’s the sixth highest of any Premier League club and will be used as a stick to beat them with.
I understand why. We know the argument: “You spent all that money and for what – you might as well have not bothered.”
But also: what choice do you have when you were in League One two years ago and want to compete?
The competitive imbalance demands that you invest, because if you don’t then why bother trying so hard to get there at all (other than for a payday). But here’s the thing: spending even £100m guarantees nothing.
Ipswich’s starting XI for Sunday’s home game against Arsenal contained players with 97 senior international appearances, none of which are for a nation currently ranked in Fifa’s top 25.
In Brazil’s last fixture, there was a period of the match when they had three Wolverhampton Wanderers players on the pitch. Over the first half of the season, Wolves were Ipswich’s best hope of staying up.
Effectively, anyone promoted is now left crossing their fingers for a calamity club. That’s not so unusual: Southampton and Leicester themselves count as examples from 2022-23. West Ham and Everton have been basket case clubs for periods of this season. So too have Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
But the squads of the latter two cost around £1.5bn combined to sign. West Ham spent £120m on new players last summer and more than that in each of the last two seasons. Everton used 11 senior internationals in their last league fixture. These are the weakest other clubs and the gap is still gaping.
Over the last two months, Premier League clubs have published their accounts for the 2023-24 financial year. Nottingham Forest, who survived relegation by one place that season, posted a revenue of £155m. Over the same period, Ipswich’s revenue was £18m. Again: we’re talking levels here.
The danger here is that we edge closer towards self-realisation. It’s an obvious point, but the 2024-25 Premier League season had 17 of the same clubs as 2023-24. Now 2025-26 will have the same 17 clubs, with the same broadcasting riches as before. It therefore becomes even harder to compete as a newcomer.
The Premier League desperately needs competition at both ends. Title races and battles for European places are important, and typically demand the majority of media focus, but if chances of staying up become forlorn, you inevitably allow complacency to seep into those above them.
And so thoughts inevitably turn to next season already. Scott Parker has created a prodigious defence at Burnley and may look to play in the same way after promotion.
Leeds United have the history, the likely pulling power and the ambition. In the Championship, Southampton and Ipswich will be favourites for repromotion and Leicester will too if Profitability and Sustainability Rules sanctions don’t catch up with them.
For now we can put a pin in the issue, and hope that we are merely in the middle of a blip. But if we are still asking the same question, in the same circumstances, this time next year, it will be impossible to escape the suspicion that the Premier League has a promoted club problem.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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