Here we find ourselves, deep into our Premier League purgatory, our no-man's land, our limbo, our strange extended pre-season for 2025-2026. Stumbling around the nothingness, we find a fellow denizen of the abyss, Leicester City. A fellow member of our little in-between league of six, the handful of clubs - Ipswich, Leicester, Southampton, Leeds, Burnley and Sheffield United - stuck in our little in-between space, the floor between floors, the mezzanine.
The thing about the mezzanine is that even when you are in it, you sort of think you aren't. You imagine yourself superior to the other participants. We will go up and thrive, they are a waste of a promotion spot. We have competed, they have disgraced themselves. You become dismissive of the idea that you will basically in the same little group until your yo-yo eventually settles at the top or (more likely) at the bottom of its cycle.
We have now had ten fixtures in our little sextet over the past two seasons and gained just 10 points - winning 2, drawing 4, losing 4. I suppose that we seem to find these games challenging is unsurprising. As useless as Southampton and Leicester look to us from outside these clubs are our peers. We have never looked remotely good enough to consider these games easy wins and that's one reason why we're all down in the basement together.
That we lost this one was not so surprising, but it was depressing. As depressing as any defeat this season and there have plenty far more meaningful than this one. You spend all season telling yourself the opposition are simply too powerful, so you put a lot on these winnable games. You want to think you're a cut above them and when you're not alarm bells start ringing. Yet, "winnable" in this context means "even", rather than a walkover and there's so few of them that it's easy for them to blaze past without getting what you need out of them.
As with the Southampton home game, you could put a positive spin on the general flow on Sunday. When we played Leicester and Southampton last season we were clearly inferior in a broad sense, even if it wasn't reflected in our results. In our win at St. Mary's last season, we played the underdog role brilliantly, defending stoutly and taking our best chance. At Portman Road in the last half hour we eventually overwhelmed them with energy, belief and bottle, rather than ability, following a chastening first hour. Both games with Leicester last season followed the same rough pattern - outclassed for long periods but doggedly staying in the game until opposition nerves started twitching and momentum flipped.
We did not control any of those games and this time we sort of did. Leicester, like Southampton in January, had to play the underdog role, ceding territory and allowing us to search too hard for a goal before hitting us with counter punches. I suppose that new arrangement is progress of a sorts. I don’t imagine Leicester City in 20 expected Ipswich fans to be “depressed” at losing to
Unfortunately, it is also exactly the kind of scenario that we have absolutely sucked at. Every time the pressure has been on us to make the running, we have managed to be wasteful in attacking situations, prone to dangerous turnovers and sluggish in defending counter attacks, then compounded it with passive penalty box defending and porous goalkeeping.
It is easy to feel sorry for yourself when you have had 20 shots to the opposition's 9 in an away game, but it was hard to escape the feeling we were getting our just desserts here. There was a warning shot, with Leicester managing to bypass our entire press by winning one 50-50 midfield, leaving Jacob Greaves and Dara O'Shea exposed to a 3 on 2.
It only took another eight minutes for Leicester to make good the threat. Jack Clarke slipped, cruel calamity following him as it often has this season. James Justin dispossessed him, drove past Jens Cajuste, who was too pure to foul the full back either when getting run past or when he subsequently caught up to him. Justin slipped in Jamie Vardy, neither O'Shea nor Alex Palmer offered any obstacle as his shot pea-rolled in.
Between that first one and the killer second, we had ten shots, seemingly with ever decreasing levels of composure. Then Leicester found another nice big pocket of space where you'd hope our midfield would be operating, forcing Davis into a central area. This released Kasey McAteer with a narrow angle to batter his first ever Premier League goal into Alex Palmer's near post. The opposition's 9th touch in our penalty area (we finished with 31) and their 3rd shot on target.
Exactly the kind of frustrating afternoon of rope-a-dope you imagine the other 22 teams we will play in the championship next season will be hoping to inflict on us. When we're installed as first or second favourite to win the championship next season, we are going to have to get used to this scenario very quickly.
I suppose the rational part of my brain does know that everything after the Wolves home game was essentially meaningless. There's no pride or momentum that really carries over from a positive end to a relegation season. Ask Luton if being the best of the three does you any favours the season after. Too many things will happen between now and the transfer window shutting for it to be worth worrying about current issues transferring to next season. Winning only one of our last six dead rubbers in spring 2022 did not do us any harm. Even the mental harm of losing so often will soon dissipate when start winning a few in the division below.
Still, it's hard not to let the run of seemingly endless failures wash over you and to see intractable problems from front to back - fragile at the back, sluggish in midfield, indecisive in attack. Even if we all know these things are relative and all issues will look less daunting when the 21st to 44th best teams in the country start rocking up, Summer cannot come quick enough.