2026/2027 season

Premier League

Team page
Premier League · Team page
Ipswich Town
Head coach: Gary O'Neil · 4-2-3-1. Vérifié sur les deux compositions officielles Sky Sports, identiques : 22/08/2026 contre Sunderland et 30/08/2026 à Manchester United (Scherpen - O'Shea, Diop, Greaves, Davis - Lukić, Núñez - Issahaku, Enciso, Maeda - Emersonn), avec seulement une permutation Maeda/Emersonn dans l'étiquetage des postes avancés.
Rank
10th
Pts
9
P
7
Form
🟡 Average

The essentials at a glance

The summary of this page: estimated level of play, form trend and qualitative verdict. For the details, head to the other tabs.

Editors' ratings
8/10
Attack
1/10
Defence
4/10
Form
4/10
Confidence / mood
Current risk:Very high

10th with 9 pts from 7 matches: 3 wins, 0 draws, 4 defeats.

11 goals scored, 15 conceded.

Erling Haaland is again firefighter this season and made two goals on behalf of Manchester City against Ipswich Town. However, the Norwegian was also injured... Enzo Maresca: Erling Haaland not seriously injured After the victory of Saturday (3-2 for The Citizens), it was clear that the superspits stumbled into the catacombs. And so makes [...] Continue reading..

Soccernews · 17 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca praises his side after their beat Ipswich Town at home in the Premier League.

BBC Sport · 17 Oct 2026

Ipswich were the latest victims, but they put up a fight in City’s first home Premier League game since being found to have breached financial rules .

The Guardian — Football · 17 Oct 2026

City were playing in their first home Premier League game since the independent commission’s verdict

The Independent — Football · 17 Oct 2026

How the team has played recently

Match-by-match results, record and rhythm of the current season.

Latest matches
Lvs Manchester City FC (A) · 2-3
Wvs Fulham FC (H) · 2-1
Lvs Everton FC (A) · 0-1
Wvs Crystal Palace FC (A) · 3-2
Lvs Liverpool FC (H) · 0-2
WWWLLLL
11 scored / 15 conceded over 7 matches played
Rest: 1 day since the last match · 2 matches played in the last 15 days
Home form
2W - 0D - 1L
Away form
1W - 0D - 3L
Statistics

Computed from this season's scores, every time the page is shown.

Goals scored per match
1.4
Goals conceded per match
1.8
At home
2 scored · 3 conceded in 2 matches
Away
5 scored · 6 conceded in 3 matches
Over 2.5 goals
3 of 5
Both teams score
3 of 5
Clean sheets
0 of 5
Failed to score
2 of 5
Cumulative points vs league average

Not enough matchdays recorded yet for this curve — history builds up with every standings refresh.

How Ipswich Town play

System, playing identity, and what sets the team apart at both ends of the pitch.

Playing identity
Preferred system
4-2-3-1. Vérifié sur les deux compositions officielles Sky Sports, identiques : 22/08/2026 contre Sunderland et 30/08/2026 à Manchester United (Scherpen - O'Shea, Diop, Greaves, Davis - Lukić, Núñez - Issahaku, Enciso, Maeda - Emersonn), avec seulement une permutation Maeda/Emersonn dans l'étiquetage des postes avancés.
Philosophy
Not formalised by a first-hand source. Verified elements: Gary O'Neil fielded seven new signings from his very first competitive match (Sky Sports, 22/08/2026) and relies on three wide and half-space creators (Issahaku, Enciso, Maeda) ahead of a Lukić-Núñez double pivot. His only public statements gathered concern the collective effort (“we had to work hard to win”) and the rarity of Enciso's profile.
Attacking strengths
4 goals in 2 matchdays, from four different scorers: Emersonn (24') and Jack Clarke (90') against Sunderland, Leif Davis (29') and Chuba Akpom (90+1') at Old Trafford. An important nuance: two of these four goals came in the very last minutes, including one when the match was already lost. Add a 3-1 over Leicester in the League Cup (a brace from Marcelino Núñez, including a lob from around 50 metres).
Defensive solidity
The most worrying area: 6 goals conceded in 2 matchdays, including 5 at Manchester United on 30/08 (Bruno Fernandes hat-trick, Jacob Greaves own goal, Bryan Mbeumo goal), for a goal difference of -2 and 12th place as of 30/08.
Pressing
Unverified: no numerical data available for Ipswich in 2026-27. Observed fact at Old Trafford: the opponent's equaliser came from a ball lost by Marcelino Núñez under pressure from Matheus Cunha (Sky Sports report, 30/08/2026).
Transitions
Not measured. Attributable element: O'Neil himself admitted after Old Trafford to having “lost control of the momentum” over the final half-hour, with the team conceding four goals between the 56th and 82nd minutes.
StrengthExceptional summer investment for a promoted side — Sky Sports ran a headline on 27/08 stating that the arrival of Exequiel Palacios took spending “to nearly £200m” — with international-level profiles (Palacios, Julio Enciso, Daizen Maeda, Saša Lukić, Florentino Luís, Abdoul Ouattara). Added to this are very recent Premier League experience (2024-25 season) and progress in the Cup.
WeaknessDefensive fragility and an inability to hold on to a game situation against a big side (5 goals conceded in 35 minutes at Old Trafford, including a Jacob Greaves own goal), the simultaneous integration of a very large number of new signings under a head coach appointed in late June, and absences in the attacking and midfield areas (Jaden Philogene, Jack Taylor, Azor Matusiwa, Florentino Luís).

The mood around the club, and who is missing

Internal climate, relationship with the supporters, and known absences before the next match.

Mood
Squad confidence
Solid despite the hiding at Old Trafford. Ipswich are on six wins in seven matches in all competitions and have won their last two home games, which puts the 2-5 conceded at Manchester United in perspective. The club go into Liverpool's visit with an encouraging home record: twelve wins each in 36 meetings at Portman Road, when Liverpool lead the overall head-to-head very comfortably. The weak point lies elsewhere: midfield is decimated, with Azor Matusiwa and Jack Taylor ruled out and Florentino Luís doubtful, which forces Gary O'Neil to rethink his central structure three days after conceding five.
Coach / players / board relationship
A deliberate break with the previous era: Kieran McKenna left after four and a half years and Gary O'Neil was appointed on 23/06/2026 from Strasbourg, on a three-year contract (2026-27 season page on Wikipedia and worldfootball.net). The volume of recruitment suggests strong backing from the owners, but no statement from the board could be verified.
Mood with the supporters
Not documented by the sources consulted: neither a protest movement nor any particular fervour has been reported. The context is that of an immediate return to the top flight after a single season in the Championship (2nd on 81 points), and the club has taken care over the staging of its new signings (Palacios unveiled with a horse and a tractor, relayed by Sky Sports on 27/08).
Pressure on the head coach
Still low. Gary O'Neil has been in post since the end of June, has won his first league match and a cup round, and the defeat at Old Trafford does not count against him at this stage. Hosting Liverpool is a real marker, however: Sports Mole leads explicitly on his determination to avoid a second hiding in a row, and his decision on whether to keep Kjell Scherpen in goal will be scrutinised.
Club objectives
Chairman Mark Ashton has set out a target explicitly higher than mere survival, via two separate statements relayed by Vital Football (08/05/2026 then 23/06/2026): he rejected any “little Ipswich” mentality and considered that aiming only to avoid finishing “fourth from bottom” would be “defeatist” — “We can't go in with a mentality that fourth from bottom would be success. If you start with that, I think it's defeatist” — while promising “a right good go at it” in “the biggest and best league in the world”. These two quotes come from the same relay and could not be cross-checked against an independent source, the East Anglian Daily Times — the leading local outlet on the subject — being blocked by the proxy. External projections are more favourable to Ipswich than to the other two promoted clubs: the Opta supercomputer relayed by Sports Illustrated (20/08/2026) ranks them 19th with a 30.8% relegation risk and the Oddschecker bookmakers (26/08/2026) make them the least threatened of the three (odds of 11/10, i.e. 46.7% implied probability), whereas the Sky Sports supercomputer (21/08/2026) predicts 20th, as for the other two promoted clubs.
Recent internal tensions
No tension reported at this stage. Worth noting without it constituting a conflict: Sky Sports listed on 25/08 several players being pushed towards the exit or in talks over a departure (Anis Mehmeti to Wrexham, Chiedozie Ogbene, Cameron Humphreys, Alex Palmer), with Ali Al-Hamadi leaving on loan to Sheffield Wednesday.
Absences
DoubtfulEmersonn — Injured his knee in the defeat at Manchester United, his availability against Liverpool is uncertain.
InjuredJaden Philogene-Bidace — Ankle injury, out for Liverpool's visit.
InjuredAzor Matusiwa — Muscle injury, ruled out against Liverpool.
InjuredJack Taylor — Knee injury, ruled out against Liverpool.
DoubtfulFlorentino Luís — Announced as doubtful for Liverpool's visit.

Before kick-off

What to know before the next match: statistical form, qualitative analysis, and a computed estimate of the 1/X/2 probabilities.

Next match

Ipswich Town — Nottingham Forest

At homeFriday 23 October at 21:00Matchday 8
In 5 days. Kick-off time confirmed by the league. Paris time · football-data.org fixtures.

Prediction, odds and form of both teams →

What the press says

No preview found for this fixture. The press mostly covers the big games, and usually the day before.

Prediction
EstimateIpswich Town — Nottingham Forest
39 %
1 · Ipswich Town
23 %
X · draw
38 %
2 · Nottingham Forest
In-house calculation, from this page's standings data alone: 7 matches played by Ipswich Town, 6 matches by Nottingham Forest. Confidence: medium
The formula, in plain words — with this match's figures
  1. League average. 189 goals scored over 130 team-matches played (20 teams taken into account), i.e. μ = 1.45 goal scored per team per match. This is the reference point: everything that follows is expressed relative to it.
  2. Attacking and defensive strengths. Goals scored (or conceded) per match, divided by μ. 1.00 = exactly average; in defence, above 1.00 means “concedes more than average”.
    TeamGoalsRawKept
    Ipswich Town — attack11 in 7 matches1.081.04
    Ipswich Town — defence15 in 7 matches1.471.26
    Nottingham Forest — attack5 in 6 matches0.570.79
    Nottingham Forest — defence8 in 6 matches0.920.96
    The “Kept” column is the result of shrinkage towards the mean: weight = P / (P + 6), i.e. 0.54 for Ipswich Town and 0.50 for Nottingham Forest. The rest of the weight goes to the league average. This is what stops a lone 5-0 from producing an attack at 3.3 times the average — and hence a 95% probability.
  3. Home advantage (γ). Measured on the league itself: 1.42 goal scored on average by the host against 1.42 by the visitor, over the 52 fixtures present in each team's last 5 matches. Raw ratio 1.00; shrunk towards 1 (weight 0.44, on the log of the ratio) then capped at 1.25 → γ = 1.00. Shrinkage goes towards 1, i.e. no advantage at all: while the sample is small, the model does not assert a home advantage it cannot measure.
  4. Venue correction, specific to each team. Drawn from the home/away split: points per match at the venue concerned are compared to points per match over all fixtures, with stronger shrinkage (weight = P / (P + 8)) and a bound of ±12%.
    Ipswich Town at home: 2.00 pts/match versus 1.29 overall over 3 matches → ×1.120
    Nottingham Forest away: 1.33 pts/match versus 0.83 overall over 3 matches → ×1.120
  5. Expected goals. One side's attack is set against the other's defence. γ applies to the host only: applying it the other way round too would count the home advantage twice.
    λIpswich Town = 1.45 × 1.04 × 0.96 × 1.00 × 1.120 = 1.63
    λNottingham Forest = 1.45 × 0.79 × 1.26 × 1.120 = 1.61
  6. Poisson grid. Probability of every exact score from 0-0 to 8-8, assuming the two goal totals are independent, then adding up the cells: home win 38.9%, draw 23.3%, away win 37.8% — displayed rounded to whole numbers so that they add up to exactly 100. Most likely exact score in the grid: 1-1 (only 10.3%, which says enough about how unpredictable an exact score is).
Limits of this model — they are not anecdotal.
  • It only knows goals and a venue. Neither absences, suspensions, line-ups, fatigue, stakes, weather nor club context enter the calculation — while the other tabs of this page show that they matter.
  • The assumption that the two goal totals are independent is false in reality: it slightly underestimates tight scores, hence the draw.
  • γ is measured over a rolling window (each team's last 5 matches), not over the whole season.
  • The shrinkage constants (6, 60, 8) and the bounds are choices, not measurements. They were tuned to be cautious early in the season; they were not calibrated on a results history, as none is available here.
  • No after-the-fact evaluation has been made: at this stage, nobody knows whether this model is better or worse calibrated than another.
What other sources say
No external source has been collected for this match. That is the normal state: readings are taken by hand, and an empty box is better than an unverified figure.
This block shows probability estimates, not predictions, and carries no advisory value. The in-house estimate is the result of a formula applied to a small sample; the figures from external sources are reproduced as they were collected, without their method having been verified.

The full squad

The professional squad by position, captain marked with an armband.

Goalkeepers
  • Kjell Scherpen
  • Christian Walton
  • Alex Palmer
  • Cieran Slicker
  • David Button
Defenders
  • Dara O'SheaC
  • Jacob Greaves
  • Issa Diop
  • Leif Davis
  • Cédric Kipré
  • Darnell Furlong
  • Cameron Humphreys
  • Somto Boniface
Midfielders
  • Saša Lukić
  • Marcelino Núñez
  • Exequiel Palacios
  • Florentino Luís
  • Abdul Fatawu Issahaku
  • Julio Enciso
  • Daizen Maeda
  • Jaden Philogene
  • Azor Matusiwa
  • Abdoul Ouattara
  • Kasey McAteer
  • Jack Taylor
  • Anis Mehmeti
  • Chiedozie Ogbene
  • Finley Barbrook
  • Tommy Taylor
Forwards
  • Emersonn
  • Chuba Akpom
  • Jack Clarke
  • Sindre Walle Egeli
  • Gerrard Buabo
Squad last verified on 31 Aug 2026 — source: Cross-referencing of the 2026-27 list on 11v11.com, the worldfootball.net page (summer arrivals and departures) and the official Sky Sports line-ups of 22/08 and 30/08/2026 (O'Shea wears the armband in both matches). Players reported as having left by worldfootball.net (Ali Al Hamadi, Ben Johnson, George Hirst, Harry Clarke, Wes Burns, Sammie Szmodics, Conor Townsend, Kayne van Oevelen) have been removed — take care not to confuse Harry Clarke, who left for Preston, with Jack Clarke, scorer on 22/08. Non-exhaustive list and subject to change: the window is still open as of 31/08 and several departures were announced (Mehmeti, Ogbene, Humphreys, Palmer)..

What has been said recently

Chronological feed of verified information about the club.

rss17 Oct 2026
Premier, City's seventh with Ipswich, Chelsea wins but what fear for Martinez
Source: ANSA Sport
rss17 Oct 2026
Why Man City fans have inflatable bananas for Premier League clash with Ipswich
Source: The Independent — Football
rss17 Oct 2026
On which channel are you watching Manchester City Ipswich Town live?
Source: Soccernews
rss17 Oct 2026
Man City's Maresca 'very happy' after Ipswich win
Source: BBC Sport
rss15 Oct 2026
Sutton's predictions v boxer & Ipswich fan Fabio Wardley
Source: BBC Sport
rss17 Oct 2026
Haaland helps Maresca achieve record start as Manchester City defeat Ipswich
Source: The Guardian — Football
Club3 Sep 2026
Ipswich open matchday 3 by hosting Liverpool on Friday 4 September at 20:00 at Portman Road, live on Sky Sports. It is the matchday's only Friday game.
Source: Football Web Pages
Injury3 Sep 2026
Forward Emersonn, a scorer in the first two matchdays, has a knee problem with no return date, while Jaden Philogene-Bidace and Jack Taylor are announced as unavailable until mid-September.
Source: SportsGambler
Result2 Sep 2026
Before hosting Liverpool, Ipswich are on six wins in seven matches in all competitions and have not lost at home in their last two games. The two clubs have met 74 times, with a clear advantage to Liverpool (38 wins to 14), but the balance at Portman Road is perfect: twelve wins each in 36 matches.
Source: Yahoo Sports
Injury2 Sep 2026
The midfield injury list grows before Liverpool: Azor Matusiwa has a muscle problem, Jack Taylor a knee injury, and Florentino Luís is announced as doubtful. Jaden Philogene-Bidace remains out with an ankle problem and Emersonn, who came off with a knee injury at Old Trafford, is doubtful.
Source: Sports Mole
Institutional2 Sep 2026
Sky Sports award Ipswich's window the best mark in the league, 9 out of 10. Their correspondent James Green refers to around £200m spent, fourteen arrivals and eighteen departures, and believes the club “strengthened virtually every area”, citing Julio Enciso and Abdul Fatawu in particular.
Source: Sky Sports
Institutional2 Sep 2026
Ipswich are the sixth biggest spenders in the Premier League this summer with £171m, in a market that broke every record at £3.46bn, against £3.14bn last year.
Source: Sports Mole
Contract1 Sep 2026
On 1 September the club announced, under the headline “New deal and loan for Cam”, a contract extension for one of its players together with a loan, the same day as Chiedozie Ogbene's move to Lincoln City.
Source: Ipswich Town (site officiel)
Club1 Sep 2026
On 1 September the club also confirmed the arrival of Morocco international Rosella Ayane in its women's team.
Source: Ipswich Town (site officiel)
Transfers1 Sep 2026
On 1 September the club confirmed the arrival of forward Zian Flemming, signed from Burnley for around £20m, its most expensive signing of the summer.
Source: Sky Sports
Result30 Aug 2026
Ipswich opened the scoring at Old Trafford before losing 2-5 to Manchester United on 30 August, undone by a Bruno Fernandes hat-trick; the promoted club keep the three points taken in their opening win against Sunderland.
Source: NBC Sports
News last verified on 18 Oct 2026. Sources: sports press (L'Équipe, Le Parisien, Foot Mercato, regional press…) and official club websites — see the link on each item.
Editorial content (playing style, mood, absences, external prediction sources) last verified on 3 Sep 2026. The standings/form data above are refreshed automatically — as is the 1/X/2 estimate, recomputed on every view.