It is pleasing to look over the great results that Mick McCarthy has been achieving at Ipswich and to see that his tactics have been paying off.
The worrying part is that other teams have also been pulling off unexpected results.
Normally just over 50 points would be enough for a team to stay up but this season that certainly won’t be the case. In ways the league table still makes for worrying reading as everything is still very open and anything could happen.
Huddersfield sit just inside relegation zone on 47 points, three points behind Ipswich in 17th and just five points above Huddersfield is Birmingham all the way up in 11th position. It is strange to think that in just two or three games the whole bottom half of the table could switch around and no one is safe.
It isn’t great for Ipswich as a slight lapse in concentration, a bit of bad luck or just a dip in form could drag the club into League One. The plus side is that at least 12 teams could easily be dragged into the relegation zone and not all of them will be able to keep winning.
If you are in the relegation zone you have to go out to win every game and hope that someone else slips up somewhere else. However if you are in the Tractor Boys position all you should be doing is concentrating on your own results as technically you do not need any favours from other teams.
The question everybody is now asking is; how many points will it take to stay up and will Ipswich reach that amount? I been saying over the last few weeks that I believe Ipswich won’t be relegated and I still feel as confident about their survival chances right now.
The table does look very worrying but there are enough winnable games left in the fixture list to keep Ipswich up. It might take 56, 57 or even 58 points to avoid relegation this season but that is a points tally that McCarthy’s side can comfortably reach.
The Suffolk side currently sit on 50 points and I can break down why they are likely to pick up at least another eight points. Mick McCarthy has been great at grinding out 0-0 draws away from home recently and has been even better about pulling off surprise wins at Portman Road. Three out of the last four away games have finished 0-0 and five out of the last six home games have been wins.
There are six games left for Ipswich to play, three at home and three away. The Tractor Boys travel to Derby, Sheffield Wednesday and Burnley which are all games where the usual tactics should pay off and earn the team three points at the very least. Home games against Hull, Crystal Palace and Birmingham sound very tricky but with the way the team have been playing recently you would back them to beat almost anyone at Portman Road right now.
I can see Ipswich picking up at least two wins or one win and two draws from those home games, which combined with my prediction for the away games would give the team a total of at least 58 points.
Additionally, looking over the last 11 games Mick McCarthy’s side have picked up 18 points in 11 games, roughly 1.6 points per game. Keeping to that ratio would give Ipswich at least 9 points from the remaining games, which would be enough to survive. For these reasons I do believe that Ipswich will still be a Championship side next season, despite the ever changing Championship league table.
