Ipswich Town's Promising Start in the Premier League
Six points from four Premier League games. A home win, an away win, and a start that most Ipswich Town supporters would have grabbed with both hands before a ball was kicked at Sunderland last month.
Throw in progress in the Carabao Cup and the picture looks even brighter. Ipswich had gone out to League Two opposition at the first attempt in each of the previous two seasons. This time they cleared that hurdle. It felt like another small but telling sign of a club adjusting to a higher level.
Then came Arsenal.
Losing to the Premier League champions in midweek brought no shame. Ipswich were outgunned, as most teams are, but they refused to go quietly. Another late goal gave the scoreline a touch more respectability and underlined a growing theme: this team does not clock off. They have already scored five times in the 90th minute or later this season. That is not luck. That is mentality.
Yet the defeat still stung for a different reason.
For several members of Gary O'Neil’s squad, this was supposed to be their chance. Minutes have been scarce, opportunities even more so. The cup exit shuts down one avenue for game time just as the schedule begins to thin out.
Only 14 fixtures remain in the calendar year. Just a couple of those weeks will demand two games. Set that against a 27-man first-team squad and the maths is brutal.
O'Neil knows it. He is not pretending otherwise.
He has already been asked how he plans to keep so many players engaged when so few can start. He did not duck the question. "I'm more than happy to have those difficult conversations with people," he said recently. "They're never personal and the players understand hopefully. It only takes an injury, a change of form or something I see in training to go from not playing to being back in the staring XI."
That is the manager’s stance. Tuesday night at the Emirates, you could feel the players’ side of it.
Darnell Furlong wore the armband against Arsenal. He also wore the look of a man who wants more than he is getting. The defender was a fixture in the team that powered Ipswich out of the Championship. This season, he has had less than 25 minutes of league football.
"It's really tough, that's all I can say. I'll keep working hard and try to change things," he told BBC Radio Suffolk. No drama, no outburst. Just the blunt honesty of a player who believes he should be involved.
O'Neil does not disagree with the importance of Furlong, only with the idea that importance is measured in minutes.
"I've not used Darnell anywhere near as much as I want to, but I love him to bits and he's a massively important part of what we're trying to do this season," the Ipswich boss explained. "How I value the players is not based on how many minutes they play, it's about how much you do to help the group."
That kind of praise can sound hollow if the player feels frozen out. Furlong, though, chose a different tone. He recognises the step up, and the reality that comes with it.
"The squad is a level up from last year to meet the demands of this league," he said. "There have been some great signings, with some great players and some great humans. It's one very well knitted group."
Those words matter. If they reflect the wider dressing room, Ipswich have something powerful: a squad with promotion winners, new arrivals, and frustrated substitutes all pulling in the same direction.
They will need that unity now. The league campaign resumes at Everton this weekend, where a win would give Ipswich three victories from their opening five top-flight games for only the eighth time in the club’s history.
Early days, yes. But how long before a promising start begins to look like a serious Premier League season taking shape?
