Number 1 - Comments

Thanks for commenting and yeah. Not long until we find out if we make it.

As the end of the season gets closer and closer, we have a small handful of games remaining for us to secure our place in the Championship play-offs.

April will be a super busy month, with one match at the start of May to wrap the season up, and it looks likely that it'll be a tight chase between ourselves and Millwall to swipe the final spot in the top six.

First up is perhaps one of the more difficult assignments we could choose to get, as we make the trip to Bournemouth, who are on course to break the 100 point mark and are unbeaten at the Vitality Stadium so far this season.

It could be a tall order. But how would we fare…

What a result. A crazy game settled by our stand-in left back Cameron Pring, with a fine strike in the final stages of the 90.

We made an extraordinary start, heading to Dorset and going 2-0 up after just six minutes, with set-pieces yielding goals by Joe Williams and Tomas Kalas.

But Bournemouth then got their bearings in order, with a pair of goals in five minutes when Jefferson Lerma and Dominic Solanke took advantage of some sedate defending to strike.

Bournemouth had chances come and go but an even game meant both could conceivably have found themselves the game's fifth goal as it moved into the latter stages, until finally, it was us who broke the door down when a fine hit by Pring flew into the back of the net, and we resisted late Bournemouth pressure to take 3 points.

It was a super result on the South Coast, but now we had to build on it. Next up for that was back-to-back games against two members of the bottom 3, with the first seeing Peterborough making the trip to Ashton Gate. Would we see another result go our way?

Just about, yes. A 2-1 win isn't necessarily the most glamorous eye-catching result, but it's proof we got the job done on this one.

I made the slightly bold approach to stick Conor Hazard in goal for his first appearance since joining in January, and it looked potentially like backfiring when Jonson Clarke-Harris put Peterborough in front.

But not long later, Ryan Manning marked his recall with a delicious finish, and from there, we generally looked likelier to do something productive. Finally it came when a free-kick hit the bar and Kalas put in the rebound.

All good stuff and something in our favour.

Next up on the list, meanwhile, we had the trip to Stoke, which was once a difficult place to go but with the Potters in the relegation zone and in serious danger of dropping into League One, less so.

We demolished Stoke 6-0 at Ashton Gate earlier in the season, so would we inflict more pain on them in our Good Friday match?

Very much even this time.

Stoke did certainly give us trouble, particularly after the half-time break, but this was a game where both side's attackers ended up getting it wrong, and the points were shared.

With that being the first part of the Easter double header, our next step is to take on the second part of that equation, as Easter Monday saw us welcome Sheffield United to Ashton Gate. So would there be a result in our favour?

Could've been better, could've been worse.

A fairly low quality first half would see a fine strike by Rhian Brewster crash into the back of the net, but Nahki Wells put us back on level terms just after the break.

We were likelier winners from there, creating plenty of chances and pressurising the Blades backline, if ultimately without reward.

After the Easter double draws, we now have 3 games to go, in the form of contests against Derby County, Hull City and Huddersfield Town - all teams who may perhaps have pointers for us on what to do or not do in the Premier League.

This is how things are shaping up…

6th with 3 to go, in a tightening fight after Barnsley ran out of steam and have picked up just one point from their last 4 games. Ourselves and Millwall are very much snapping at their heels.

Elsewhere, that draw we had with Sheffield United, with West Brom practically in the play-offs. At the other end, Derby and their single digit points total are gone, and were mathematically relegated in February, while Stoke and Peterborough are pretty much on the way out.

Three games to go in any case, and it's all on us to try and get this done, and maybe even land promotion to the Premier League's promised land on the first try.

We're heading into the business end of the season now and March is upon us. 4 games loom in the month, including a big one at Barnsley, and 4 steps closer to seeing whether or not we qualify for a place in the Championship play-offs.

First up in this high-stakes month was a visit from Birmingham City, who had proved a thorn in our sides in a 3-3 draw at their place in November. So how would we go this time?

Well… grateful we didn't lose, irritated we didn't win.

The first half had been even and not the best, but George Friend scoring after the break seemed to act like pouring a bucket of cold water over us. Suddenly we woke up, creating chance after chance until finally Harry Cornick forced it over the line with just over 10 minutes to go.

A defeat was avoided, but this really felt like two points lost even if we did concede first.

Evidently, work is still gonna be needed to secure our spot in the Championship top six come season's end.

Next down the line was another team beginning with B - Blackburn, to be precise. Would that go any better?

Talk about picking your moment to deliver the worst performance of the season. Exactly how Vyner and Baker got 7+ ratings in a 5-2 defeat is something I find mystifying, but anyway.

This game had seemed fairly interestingly set-up at the break, with Matty James having scored a cracking equaliser to cancel out a Blackburn opener and our defence holding firm.

Then it all collapsed. Daniel Ayala scored twice at corners either side of an own goal by Ryan Manning, who had a dreadful game including being repeatedly exposed and getting a booking - as it turns out, his 10th in the Championship of the season, earning him a two game ban.

Not even Han-Noah Massengo's late goal could rouse us, given Blackburn scored two minutes later. No doubt if this was a real game we'd be serenaded off with Blackburn fans going “Premier League, you're having a laugh”

After that disaster, we had one of our biggest games so far, in the form of a trip to Barnsley, who are also in the hunt for a top six spot.

This feels like must win after that disaster. Would it be?

I mean, I guess I'll take that. Sort of like the Birmingham result, a game where we should've won on stats but could easily have lost.

The opening phase of this game seemed to be a hangover from our collapse across the Pennines at Ewood Park, with Carlton Morris striking early and our defence creaking a bit.

After the break, however, our changes got Barnsley pinned back, and we were in the ascendancy. We could easily have equalised before we did, and had that relief when substitute Alex Scott forced home an equaliser. Could've followed that with more, but I'll not be greedy and take that.

Our final opportunity to avoid a winless March was a big one, as West Bromwich Albion arrived in Bristol still with faint hopes of challenging Bournemouth and Fulham, who seem to be on the way to earning promotion automatically.

Could we bag a noteworthy scalp over WBA in our final game before the last international break of the season?

Well now. This seems to show us off as no pushovers, not least as we could get ties against WBA in the dreaded play-offs.

In fairness, West Brom could easily have been in front after missing several first half chances, and not only did they fail to help themselves with that, but they gifted us a two goal lead with first an own goal and then an error by Sam Johnstone leading to Chris Martin making it 2-0.

Joe Williams swept in a lovely third, and although Callum Robinson got a goal back in injury time, West Brom left it too late. A penny for the thoughts of Daniel Bentley, stuck on the bench and still yet to play since leaving us for West Brom in January.

Anyway, that concludes our activities for March, and the table now looks like this…

With seven games to go in the Championship season, we remain just ahead of Millwall in the final top six position. Some tough games are on the other side, with Bournemouth and Sheffield United coming up, along with trips to struggling Peterborough, Stoke and Huddersfield sides who are still fighting to stay up and a Derby team that are trying to avoid the fate of going down with single digit points.

The end of the line is in sight though, and now it's a case of seeing whether we have what it takes to hold our nerve.

Following the manic scramble of January, we had something of a quiet opening to February, with our trip to Blackpool deferred by 2 and a half weeks.

The first taste of our amended squad would see us take on Reading at Ashton Gate, with the Royals trundling west down the M4 to be a first test and see how we implement our new arrivals.

How would they go for starters?

So far so good.

Granted, only Ryan Manning played of our deadline day recruits, with Neeskens Kebano and Harry Cornick benched and Liam Morrison intended as a defender to develop than one to necessarily chuck straight in.

Things went simple enough, mind. Chris Martin benefitted from a penalty to score, then Antoine Semenyo struck pretty much straight away after the break, and Reading were kept at bay. They did blow a decent chance or two, as noted by the high xG, but otherwise, good work by us.

Next up, we made the run west to Swansea

A winning return for Manning, who also got the assist for what turned out to be the only goal. Chris Martin, the beneficiary of such work to set up his header.

Swansea did press us better after the break, but their momentum stalled when Jake Bidwell - ironically playing the left wing-back that would've had Manning had we not swiped him - was sent off for two yellows.

This was nevertheless our third straight win in the Championship, and a sense our push for the play-offs really is now game on.

The delayed trip to Blackpool followed, and from that game we would…

… be victorious. A 1-0 win and a 4th win in a row. Ace.

This was quite an even game in truth, with neither side breaking the 1xG mark and a decent array of chances created by both sides without being taken.

As it was, substitute Kebano had the decisive moment, coming off the bench and scoring a fine strike to grab what turned out to be the winner.

A frantic February still had 3 more games for us to dive into, packing a lot of football into the calendar's slimmest month.

Middlesbrough made the trip to Bristol for our next contest, with the month having up to now been populated with the reverse outings of games we played back in August as we were still getting to grips with life in Bristol. So, how would this one turn out?

Another game, another win.

Martin scored from the penalty spot, proving again to be highly effective and showing his preference to club captain Nahki Wells up front. But having offered nothing for most of the game, Middlesbrough nearly made us pay for not grabbing another by missing some excellent chances in the second period.

That ultimately woke us up, with substitute Cornick deciding it by placing one home in injury time.

We had a few days to reflect on that, with a home clash against Coventry City next up. Would this yield another victory?

Six wins in a row. Bloody hell this top six push really is on.

Wells got the nod over Martin and made the most of it with an early opener, and Cornick would finally make pressure tell with one of those “couldn't miss” goals in the second half.

Viktor Gyokeres did give Coventry some credibility with a goal from what turned out to be their literal only shot, but we managed to keep them at arms length and would eventually see Matty James come off the bench to nab us a third goal in the final minutes of regular time.

This run of six in a row is an excellent one, possibly one of my best in recent FM game-playing at Championship level. A seventh would be suitably amazing as well, and was achievable if we were to win at Nottingham Forest in our final February encounter.

Well… can't win them all I guess.

Our attack wasn't bad but we were on the back foot when Junior Stanislas swept in a brilliant free-kick, and after we missed some great chances, we ran out of ideas, opening the door for Phillip Zinckernagel to grab a second. Drat.

Still, we did have the kudos of earning the February Manager of the Month prize. That's still something to be happy with.

The table at the end of February, for your consideration, has this resemblance…

Despite our defeat at Forest, we remain in the top six, having jumped into that territory for the first time when we defeated Coventry in the game before.

An automatic promotion push is probably beyond us, but it's game on for the play-offs. A gap emerging means it should likely be us or Millwall to try and chase down 6th, but we should still give ourselves hope that this fight is one we can come out on top in.

Also worth noting that with 59 points, we have now exceeded the 55 Bristol City picked up in the real life 2021-22 season. So there's that.

Now to see if we can stick the landing.

January has arrived, and this all got a bit wilder than I expected. But before things got particularly busy, there was some football, with our first test being a home tie against fellow play-off chasers Millwall.

Would we start 2022 the right way?

… Yeah not quite.

Andy King made the most of his continued presence in the team with an opener but we failed to build on it, which allowed Sheyi Ojo to strike an equaliser, and our day was less helped when Antoine Semenyo was flagged offside when scoring what seemed like a winner.

But nevermind. We're still in the mix, and we duly turned attention to the FA Cup, where like in the Carabao Cup, we were drawn at home to a side expected in pre-season to a bottom half Premier League finish.

Namely, Sean Dyche and Burnley, who would be making the trip from Lancashire to our corner of the world. So as we did against Watford, could we manage an upset?

Ah fuck. So close.

We matched the Clarets for the bulk of the contest, didn't give up when Johann Berg Gudmundsson got a tap-in, and landed an equaliser when Andreas Weimann got us level.

Nahki Wells, preferred for this one, then finished our turnaround just after Burnley lost Chris Wood to injury, and that made me confident that we just might pull this off. But alas it wasn't to be, as right at the end of the 90, we lost track of Ashley Barnes, and he didn't miss when one-on-one with Max O'Leary.

It was at this point, however, when our month took a turn.

We'd already received news that Andy King had no interest in signing a new contract with us and would instead be sacking us off to join Polish side Legia Warsaw at the end of the season, while we were also in the process of agreeing a loan move for out-of-favour central midfielder Tyreeq Bakinson to join League One side Rotherham United on loan, although that process would take a little longer to conclude while an acceptable wage percentage was agreed.

But then came the big one, as goalkeeper David Bentley was the subject of a bid from West Bromwich Albion, with our first choice custodian and club captain having his head turned. A £3million deal was duly agreed, and he was off to The Hawthorns, with the news confirmed on the morning of our next game at Fulham.

Hardly ideal preparation for the challenge of facing the West Londoners with their big budget and big names…

… and so it proved.

We did alright in the first half but from the moment Rob Atkinson gave away a penalty after the break, it all went wrong, capped off by ex-Bristol City man Bobby Decordova-Reid grabbing a late third.

While we licked our wounds and begun the search for a new goalkeeper to challenge Max O'Leary, we also had the FA Cup replay and the visit to Turf Moor to take on Dyche et all. So how would that go?

In retrospect, conceding that late goal to Burnley was when we lost this tie.

We gave it a really good go - we had the same xG as our Premier League opponents - but the crucial moment came when Ashley Barnes put them in front and seconds later Callum O'Dowda had a goal VAR'd out of existence. It just trundled on from there and passage to the FA Cup 4th Round has been denied to us. Boo.

We duly begun scouring for some new names for another goalkeeper, but this was proving trickier than expected. For goalkeepers, we asked MK Dons for their undisputed first choice Andy Fisher after our scouts recommended him highly, but they wanted more than we got for Bentley. We then asked Newcastle for their 4th choice keeper Freddie Woodman, but couldn't agree terms after a bid was accepted. We also had a bid accepted for Everton's Anthony Gordon as a loanee, but he told us to get lost.

This was hardly the ideal backdrop for the Severnside Derby Mark Two, as we welcomed Cardiff to Ashton Gate. A long-term injury to Nathan Baker, now vice-captain with former vice Nahki Wells bumped up to full captain, also didn't help.

Could we at least put that to one side and take a win to please our fans?

This just wasn't our day. Generally we were the better side, but the goal that likely would've lead to a second win over Cardiff this season eluded us, and losing Callum O'Dowda late on to injury after bringing on a winger who wants out also didn't help.

Our injury luck wasn't about to get any better either. While James had come back, Baker was still out, as was left-back Cameron Pring, but then a training injury saw Weimann do in his hip, effectively ruling the Austrian out for most of the rest of the season, which given he's a key player is a huge blow. With Kasey Palmer away on international duty, it left us with a few selection issues.

We did if nothing else find ourselves the new keeper I wanted to challenge O'Leary, who I'm happy to keep as first choice as he was already sneaking a few games here & there. We agreed a deal to sign Celtic's well-regarded Northern Irish keeper Conor Hazard, joining for an initial £700k fee rising to £1.2mil subject to add-ons, in what is our first successfully completed transfer as Bristol City manager.

This injury trouble however wasn't ideal, as we prepared for a trip to play Preston at Deepdale, with players out of position and youth teamers or reserves on the bench.

Win's a win, and our first in the entire month of January. So thank the Lord.

This was a close one in the first half, with veteran defender Paul Huntington cancelling out Antoine Semenyo's opening goal.

But after the break, Alex Scott in a right flank role (can play there in real life I'm told but isn't trained there yet here) got us in front just after the hour and Preston's momentum stalled even before Ledson got sent off for a vicious lunge on Scott. Ironically, Ledson had been sent off when Preston beat us in Bristol in our first defeat of the season.

Semenyo duly made sure we were victorious late on, and that concluded January's action. The table, should you be a-wonderin, now looks like this…

As you can see, we're still in the play-off race despite a fairly inconsistent month ahead of a busy January. 3 points off Blackburn in 6th is potentially a bridgeable gap.

Before then was the end of the January window, which I thought would peter out like a lot of my transfer deadline days are want to. But not this one.

We had been in talks to make some signings in the final days that took a while to conclude, and while a second bid for Gordon fizzled out due to his preference to join Reading instead, we did get two in through the door early on.

First was young defender Liam Morrison, signed as a player to develop in our under-23 set-up and develop, with a 60 grand fee enough to prize the Scotland from Bayern Munich.

I then looked around for players Bristol City have signed in real life, and while Anis Mehmeti turned us down due to literally just signing a new deal with Wycombe and Mark Sykes out of match practice after barely playing with their League 1 rivals Oxford, I did find one option. Winger/striker Harry Cornick was transfer listed at Luton despite being a first choice due to being out of contract and not signing a new deal, and given the 27-year-old put in great performances against us in both fixtures, we met their £110,000 asking price and signed him, if only after he turned down an 11th hour move to Scotland.

I thought that would be that. But then it wasn't.

For most of the window, we'd rejected bids from Nice for Pring, who I like and wanted to get a new deal signed. But then Brentford made an inquiry to sign his main left-back rival Jay Dasilva on loan.

I told the Premier League club I'd only accept a permanent thinking it would fizzle out, until they agreed to my £6million asking price. Not long after, he was moving on to the side currently bottom of the table above.

This lead to a scramble to bring in a new left-back, and we eventually managed to bring one in. Namely, Ryan Manning, with Swansea agreeing to a £1.5million deal to bring him down the M4, and after some tough negotiation, the Irishman agreed to join us.

That wasn't the end of it either. With O'Dowda injured and unwanted, and Weimann out long-term, I decided to revive an interest in finding an extra attacker, and when browsing around, I found Fulham had transfer listed Neeskens Kebano. A quick £1.1million deal was done, and the 29-year-old Dutchman with bags o' second tier experience was signed.

So that's 5 new signings, 4 of which done on transfer deadline day, and a profit overall thanks to the £9million banked for selling Bentley and Dasilva. All a bit wild, and different to my personal FM preferences to get business done early.

So, now the twin challenges of fusing together a new squad and challenging for the play-offs. How hard can it be?

December has arrived and with 5 games, it's another busy month in the world of the Championship, albeit perhaps not as busy as some Decembers can be prone to be.

Nevertheless, we have an array of challenges coming along as we seek to try and force our way into the Championship top six fight.

First of all was the visit of Derby County, as Wayne Rooney's side have the slightly more taxing issue that is trying to overcome their 21 point deduction.

So, would we give ourselves three points against the team in last place?

Andreas Weimann really was in no mood for mercy against his former club. The Austrian who once played for Derby got himself two goals and the assist for our third, converted by substitute Nahki Wells.

Derby did get a goal back to give themselves a little hope but that had burned out long before substitute Jay Dasilva added a fourth in stoppage time.

If nothing else, we're doing a good job at making Ashton Gate that stereotypical difficult place to come where we give visiting teams a difficult game. Our away form isn't the worst but we could use some decent results to further our cause.

To that end, it's north-eastward from Bristol to Hull, to face the Tigers. Would we get one over them?

Not quite.

This was a bit of a case of travel sickness. Hull should've been in front long before we did the charitable thing of scoring for them, as Rob Atkinson was in the wrong place at the wrong time at a Hull City corner.

We generally didn't offer a lot in response but did somehow find ourselves level when substitutes Palmer and Martin combined for the latter to score. However, a flying solo goal from Smith, a feeble response from us, and we went home empty handed. Shame.

Perhaps we would find home comforts more to our liking, as we prepared to face Huddersfield Town. 

We would unfortunately do so without Matty James, who picked up a training injury that will keep him out for a few weeks, if not as bad as reserve full-back Danny Simpson, who is practically out for the season, although in truth he was barely playing anyway.

Nevertheless, we still had a job to do. Would we succeed in performing it?

Back-to-back 4-1 home wins. Not a usual score but I'll take it.

Similar in some respects to the Derby game as well as the score, given we went 3-0 up, conceded one, but added another late on anyway. Whereas Weimann was the star against Derby, this time it was the man starting wide left in this one as Palmer grabbed a pair before Martin and sub Semenyo. Could easily have had more but I'll take what we got.

It does leave us still in a good top half spot as we prepare for 3 games in a week after Christmas, starting off with a trip to Luton.

Well, it was 1-1 at Ashton Gate in September and it's 1-1 at Kenilworth Road as well. How neat a package is that.

The game ebbed and flowed. Luton were better in the first half but failed to beat David Bentley and paid when a fine goal was scored by Martin. We responded by missing several chances and duly allowing Harry Cornick to punish us with an equaliser.

Could've won it, but we didn't. Drat.

No time to get too bogged down in wondering why, as we had QPR next up in our final assignment of 2021.

One of our flatter performances had come in defeat in West London to this lot, so would we get ourselves revenge?

Revenge, earnt.

In truth, this was a pretty dreadful game, with neither side being that fluent or in truth deserving, but perhaps the best moment fell our way - Tomas Kalas in an unorthodox right-back role with a decent cross, youngster Alex Scott gaining space, goal, yay.

Not that things are all smooth - an injury sustained by Nathan Baker that was then aggravated in training will keep out our best centre-back for a month. But three wins out of three at Ashton Gate in December is an excellent return.

So as we continue to power through our first season as Bristol City manager, we have this table to show at the end of December.

3 points off the play-offs and one of the division's top scorers. Not bad work at all.

Converting some of those draws into wins is a must if we want to crack the play-offs on the first try.

There's also the challenge of January to navigate. Several of our first-team players are ones of interest to other clubs, and we'll have to navigate this accordingly if some big money bids come in. 

Tune in next time to see how that goes.

We arrived in November on the back of four games without a win and having slipped out of the play-off places as a consequence. While it's not a deal-breaker given our ambition topped out pre-season at just getting a top half finish, I'd like to give it a shot in any case. At the very least, just getting a win would be a start.

To try and get somewhere in that push, we now have the joys of back-to-back trips up the M5 from Bristol to the West Midlands, first to Birmingham and then to Coventry.

So, St. Andrews. Would we be on the right side of the scoreline?

Well that just leaves more questions than answers.

This looked like being another disappointment as we failed to make being the better team in the first half work for us, and conceded to Chuks Aneke after the restart.

The it all got crazy. Chris Martin, who I was about to take off on his first start in a while, scored a quickfire double to put us in the lead, however an error from Nathan Baker (who had been at fault for Aneke's goal) lead to the former Aston Villa defender scoring an own goal to make it 2-2.

I might have been OK with that but threw on Wells to partner Martin, and he duly scored in the first half of stoppage time, which should have been the be all and end all in a game where we were the better team.

As it was, however, not quite. Space opened up for Dominic Thompson (a hero of my Ipswich save on FM22) and the left-back lashed past Bentley to grab Lee Bowyer's side a point. Bah humbug.

Still, after a few games where I've not been sure about us going forward, the comeback against Barnsley and now this seems to be showing signs we're getting to grips with the switch from 4-3-3 to 4-2-3-1 and being more press-heavy.

Coventry away next. How would we fare this time?

Hallelujah, we stuck the landing.

This should've been more comfortable, given we had the better chances, limited Coventry's attack to sporadic pressure that became non-existent after the break, and the rest. As it was, one was enough - a penalty scored by Martin, ironically coming in the only fixture Bristol City got a penalty in real life last season and what was, until their draw at Sunderland yesterday, their last spot-kick.

After this, we had the joys of an international break, then back to it in the form of welcoming Blackburn Rovers to Ashton Gate in the first of two back-to-back home games (something that seems to be a regular thing is home and away games in pairs, but anyway).

So anyway, would we be awake for when we returned after the international hiatus?

Quite the front-loaded one in truth. Blackburn's Buckley scored two goals that we didn't cover ourselves in glory preventing, before Weimann and another penalty for Martin to go with last time out at Cov saw us counter-comeback as we had against Barnsley in our last match.

The second half was less busy - we had a few chances to fully complete the turnaround, but not much.

So we move on, with early strugglers Stoke City coming our way in their first game under a new manager and off the back of putting 4 past Peterborough in their previous match. Would we be caught cold by a new manager bounce?

Well, we left the Stoke goalkeeper with football pie all over his face.

I thought Stoke would be the tough team to face as per the old stereotype and profile of some of their players, but we demolished them. 2-0 up inside ten minutes, four goals up at the break, a hat-trick for Martin and a welcome double for Kasey Palmer despite playing out of position on the left-wing.

Basically, this one, we crushed it, and a mighty impressive way to make it 5 unbeaten, in our odd habit of seemingly always being 5 unbeaten or 5 without a win.

That run would be getting a bit of a test in our next obligation, bringing with it a trip to play Sheffield United at Bramall Lane. So how would that go?

Nevermind, can't win them all and a 3-1 defeat at Bramall Lane was in truth something I might well have anticipated. We'd taken the lead through a well worked early move that saw Joe Williams cue up Martin to score, but that's as good as it got. A brace by Oli McBurnie either side of the break, and one from Joelinton (this the version from the original FM22 database before he pivoted from misfit striker to brilliant box-to-box midfielder).

Martin's goal also meant that, rather impressively, the 33-year-old scored in every match in November, earning him our first Player of the Month prize. Not bad for a player that many FM players might well have junked immediately.

So, that concludes November on a bum note, which is a shame given we made definite progress over the course of the month, albeit perhaps demonstrating we're not quite at the level yet of Sheffield United. If perhaps understandable, given this is a recently relegated side we're squabbling with.

November's table presently has this look to it…

So our inconsistent form in October has held us back a little bit, but given we're six points off and know where the goal is, we might not be out of that fight just yet.

December and January will of course have a lot of fixtures to vex us just yet, so there's time to see if we can eat up the gap and get back into that fight. We'll see how it goes.

October has arrived, and with it the chance to try and push on with a mix of games coming up, with early strugglers and strivers both coming across our path.

First up was a trip to Peterborough, who would be bottom if not for Derby and their 21 point deduction.

That was a lot closer than it should've been. Certainly I'll take the win but our defence wasn't exactly helping.

The pathway had seemed easy enough when Semenyo put us in front, only for Clarke-Harris to instantly equalise. Yet a red for Peterborough's Norburn was swiftly followed by two goals for us and many other chances, meaning we could've easily rivalled the 4-0 win we registered at Cardiff for our biggest win so far.

As it was, Clarke-Harris got another and made it nervy. We weren't exactly threatened from that point on, but still… bruh. Lots to ponder for the long bus ride home.

And indeed quite a bit to ponder for the international hiatus, given that we now have 2 weeks to think about what we've done then face the not-at-all insubstantial test that is hosting early leaders Bournemouth. This indeed gives us another quandary, given Alex Scott got injured after making a first-team worthy impression in recent starts.

That game would come about quickly enough, so, how would we fare against Scott Parker and his knatty knitwear collection?

Not well. Bournemouth basically kept our attack on mute throughout, and when former Bristol City defender Lloyd Kelly made it 2-0, it basically was the game there and then.

Oh, and the reshuffled defence didn't cover itself in glory either. So that's another headache to ponder.

Maybe our next outing will go smoother, which will see early strugglers Nottingham Forest - now under the charge of ex-Derby boss Phillip Cocu, interestingly enough - making the visit.

With the game against Bournemouth proving a disappointment, would this be any better?

Not quite. Again the crowd at Ashton Gate go home without seeing us score, but a different kind of dissatisfaction.

This was a dominant display, with our reshuffled defence keeping Forest quiet but neither starting nor substitute attackers making the most of what we created. How annoying.

Our next assignment, coming in double-quick time, is a trip to another early high-flier, as we make the trip up the M5 to the West Midlands for the first of three trips to that area in quick succession (we face Birmingham and Coventry away in our first 2 games of November).

West Brom is a difficult assignment, mind, with the Baggies making a bright start in their goal for an instant return to the Premier League.

Still, the Championship bills itself as a division where anyone can beat anyone. So would we pull of a surprise?

Ah. Perhaps not.

While we had the odd decent moment, West Brom deserved it and had already gone close a few times by the time Matt Clarke forced in a winner, and our limited vibes meant we weren't in a position to take advantage when, after making all 3 subs, WBA lost a player to injury and had to see things out with ten men.

Moving along, Barnsley would be next in our diaries, and while in real life their 2021-22 season was a disaster that saw them plummet out of the Championship, here they're mimicking the surprise form shown in 2020-21 that saw them bag a play-off position.

So, would we get one over the Tykes?

Such is the emotional rollercoaster of football that I'll take a result I wouldn't have earlier in the day.

We'd been poor in the first half, failing to respond to a preventable goal and it seemed to pivot hard when Semenyo had a goal disallowed just after the break, failed to take one of multiple consequent chances, and duly saw Carlton Morris make it 2-0.

That, however, woke us up, with Callum O'Dowda and substitute Han-Noah Massengo striking in quick succession. We could even have completed an improbable comeback, but clearly that was beyond us this time.

October is now up in any case, and here's where we are now…

It still fits the target that is a top half finish, but we are certainly sliding and given that, in typical Championship fashion, the division is yet to separate out, we're not yet confident enough to declare one way or another if we're just going for top half or trying to prize a top six finish.

I guess getting points in the next few weeks will help. So tune in next time to see if we fulfil that ambition.

August and our introduction to this Bristol City project was broadly a success, but the challenge now if we are to get to the PL is to carry on in such a vein.

With that in mind, we have September, although with a delayed start as after the ludicrous hullabaloo that was 7 games in August.

Assignment number one was a home match against Preston North End.

Our first defeat. Still never a fun sensation.

In truth it all went downhill when Weimann had a goal disallowed in the first half for offside, as we'd been the better side before that then weren't afterwards. Not even a late red card for Ryan Ledson could energise us. On another day, we would've got something out of this one, but just not to be this time around.

Nevermind. Can't win them all I suppose.

Another home game has duly come along to try and bounce back, as we welcome Luton Town and their superstar manager Nathan Jones. Wonder whatever happened to him.

So, would we brush ourselves down from the disappointment of the Preston game?

Not quite.

This was quite a helter skelter of a game in comparison. It may well have been 1-1 but could've ended up in one of many other combinations, with both ourselves and Luton giving it a proper go. Both Daniel Bentley and their keeper Simon Sluga made some excellent saves, and both sets of attackers might well go home thinking they could've decided it.

As it was, just one goal each and I'll be disappointed we missed a great chance shortly before Allan Campbell equalised.

Still, we got ourselves proof of concept that we can put teams under pressure and attack. That's something to work on for the weekend, as we travel to face QPR in West London.

So, would we get the points here?

Well… That wasn't very good.

Having created and missed multiple chances against Luton in the previous game, here, we simply did not turn up at all. QPR's only goal came when Ilias Chair scored the rebound after an initial shot hit the crossbar.

Not that things get any easier given the next thing in the diary is a Carabao Cup Third Round trip against Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium.

You know, we actually fared better than one might have expected. Sure, we didn't pull off a monumental upset and some of our defenders were given the run around, but we weren't too bad.

Manchester City did make us think the worse when Mahrez and Ferran Torres scored goals early on and gave our defence a run-around. But we held out in there, Chris Martin got us a goal to celebrate and was a tight offside call from another. Maybe I could've been ambitious to try and force penalties, but against a side with this quality, a win might've been too much to ask for. At least for now.

As it is, the main focus is seeking a first league win in 4 outings. Not that a Fulham side featuring a Premier League quality starting 11 would be the easiest of places to remedy that.

It would be easy to see this as one to endure rather than necessarily target for points. But here goes nothing…

A draw might well extend our winless run but there was promise there. We weren't over-awed by the challenge, we got back on terms quickly after Mitrovic had put Fulham in front, and we held out when they looked likelier to find a winner. So I can be content with that.

With the Championship still as exhausting as ever, we have another midweek game following on from this, as we travel back to London, this time to play a Millwall side who are above us after a flying start to their own campaign.

To try and catch out the opposition, we switched things up from the 4-3-3 wing play to 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress in the hope that this might open up a pathway to points. Would this hunch be correct?

I can be very pleased with that. We took a bit of time to go on but were comfortable enough when Wells put us in front and put Millwall to the sword. Several players have certainly made a claim to be regulars here, given my habit so far for routine chopping and changing squads.

That brings an end to the month of September and the second month of our Bristol City project, so just time for a quick scan of the Championship table…

One win from our five games in the month means that we have lost touch with the fast-starting Bournemouth and West Brom, but we are still above the base expectation of 12th or higher. I'll be happy with that for now - no need to let great be the enemy of good after all.

We just need a few more wins in our favour, and with another relentless month of Championship football to come in October, we shall see what we can do.

With a pair of late winners to win 2-1 in our opening two games as Bristol City manager, we now made progress to try and turn such a promising opening into something more tangible.

First up for this, a trip to Middlesbrough in our first league away game against a side who lost their opener at Fulham.

On paper, this is a Boro side that many expect to be top six contenders and likely will have the budget for that, and our goal is to try to take something from there.

So, would we do so?

Well there you go - we went to Middlesbrough and got something. 3 wins out of 3, all by 2-1 margins courtesy of late drama.

This wasn't quite as late as Pring's winner against Blackpool on the opening day or the double strike that helped us see off Stevenage in the Carabao Cup.

I'd say in general this was a fairly even game but we had the better chances and would force the issue when the double sub Palmer and Wells combined to win us the game. So yay us.

But of course this is the Championship so any chance we have to bask in this is short-lived before we have to go again, this time with a trip to Reading and their fight to move on from a six point deduction.

So, would we grab another win from this M4-based contest?

Our first draw then. On expected goals we should've won, but that came thanks to substitute Kasey Palmer having a penalty saved.

We in truth took a while to get going, with O'Dowda's strike in the final minutes of the first half getting us back on terms after a slow start.

Palmer's penalty was the cue for a fairly manic ending, with both sides creating and wasting chances to win it, but we crossed the line all square. So, heyho.

A quick turnaround again, mind, as just a few days later, we welcomed Swansea City to Ashton Gate.

So, would we grab ourselves 3 points?

Back-to-back draws it is then. A fairly low quality game for the demographic that watches EFL games on Friday nights on TV, with Piroe's early goal cancelled out by a good opportunistic strike from Palmer, precious few second half chances for a winner and that was that.

Still however the churn goes on, as a few days later, we welcomed Watford to Ashton Gate in our first contest against a Premier League side, and a team managed by Claudio Ranieri who it's perhaps easy to forget had a cameo in 2021-22 as one of Watford's 500 managers.

As it is, it's still a decent opportunity to prove we can mix it with the bigger fish and take something off a Premier League side. So, how would we fare?

Well Bristol City v Watford won't live in the memory books but we showed the resolve alright. A 1-0 giant-killing going our way.

This was a dreadful game, although our defence did well to keep Watford's attack limited - they didn't trouble our back-up keeper Max O'Leary at all, even after we lost Pring to an injury in the opening ten minutes.

It looked like penalties were about to loom, as is the way in the revised Carabao Cup, but right at the end, Rob Atkinson's pass cued up sub Nahki Wells, who turned a marker a few yards outside the box and lashed one home. Boom.

The reward is quite the tie of choice as well, given we'll be taking Bristol City to play Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium in the next round of the Carabao Cup.

We'll worry about that in due course though, as we have multiple Championship games to go for, starting with a trip to local rivals Cardiff City, and another clash with Welsh representatives in the EFL.

How would we fare on our first Severnside Derby of the new campaign then?

Boom, smashsed it, did the business indeed.

The first half was a fairly even game all round, where a good strike by Joe Williams had put us in front. After the break, however, we simply pushed on and left Cardiff out of answers.

Long range hits by Weimann and Williams helped put gloss on things, but the goal by Wells on his return to the starting line-up was the thing that stopped Cardiff in their tracks.

A miserable afternoon for the Bluebirds, but a fantastic one for us, as we maintain our unbeaten start and, to quote another reference to the bird nickname, a flying start to the new season.

That also brings us to the end of August 2021, and a decent first month as Bristol City manager. Just time for a quick look at the Championship table…

Long way to go but as we were predicted 14th, to be 3rd at this point is good going.

Challenge now of course is to make sure we can be similarly good over the course of the other 41 games we still have to play.

We'll be sticking with things as is for now. Despite interest in Alex Scott, Han-Noah Massengo, Max O'Leary and a few of our other players, the only bid came in for a first team player was one for Jay DaSilva from Rangers, which failed to meet my valuation. We did inquire for a loan on deadline day for Spurs winger Jack Clarke, but he turned us down to go to Cardiff instead. That's Cardiff as in the one we just spanked 4-0. Pfft. Whatever.

We'll worry about finding the best new signings later. As it is, September is now upon us and continuing our quest to get Bristol City into the Premier League. So let's carry on.

The pre-season is done and dusted, and ahead of opening the season with a visit of Blackpool, this is how we performed in our friendly runs…

After the classic “new squad so first XI v reserves”, we played a trio of games in Spain, including a somewhat surprising trip to Sevilla and winning at the Sanchez Pijuan, which… promise if we win the FA Cup or Carabao Cup, maybe?

Originally there was an 11 day gap but I felt an extra game was needed, which ended up being a comfortable win over non-league Hereford, before a win over FC Twente.

No new signings have been made, with the only noteworthy move being the allowing of highly regarded young striker Saikou Janneh to join League 2 Northampton.

Going into the season and using our 4-3-3 as a base idea, the pre-season guess is…

… a 14th place finish.

This tbf would be an improvement, given that in the real 2021-22 season (which we are copying over here), Bristol City came 17th, 7 points behind a Stoke City team that took that coveted 14th place spot, a further two points behind Coventry City in the top half (our goal is 12th or higher as per the board) and a full 20 points off Luton Town, who finished 6th in the last of the play-off positions.

The nature of the Championship tbf is that I have gotten squads into decent positions. After all, my last FM22 career mode saw me get Ipswich promoted from Championship on the first try after previously winning promotion from League One.

But now to business, and our first assignment as Bristol City boss is to take on Blackpool at Ashton Gate.

So, how did day one go?

Success.

It was an even game in truth, decided by a fine goal from Cameron Pring, who came off the bench with the idea Jay DaSilva would join the attack but instead a thunderbolt from Pring won it.

Lavery for Blackpool could be a future player for us to keep an eye on in fairness - gave us plenty of bother. But that's another question for another day.

The relentlessness of playing football at this level means that we'll have to move on quickly. After all a Carabao Cup tie at Stevenage, then league games against Middlesbrough, Reading, Swansea and Cardiff are still to come in such a dense opening to taking on the challenge of trying to get Bristol City into the Premier League.

So let's move on, with a trip to Stevenage in the Carabao Cup. Would we avoid getting the custard pie that is a Cup upset?

Just about. Stevenage actually gave us quite the good game whereas I think our wide range of changes in both personnel with 7 changes (including the youngsters Scott and Conway) and going from 4-3-3 Wing Play to Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 (which had been my FM22 standard) and we very much got bailed out at the end, with an 88th minute penalty and then a late goal by substitute DaSilva deciding it.

It's cruel in a way on Stevenage, who were decent opponents, but them's the breaks in football. Had they scored a second goal, it would've likely been something we wouldn't have recovered from, but we gamed it well in the end.

Also, I've noticed Bristol City fans have set up a website complaining about their lack of penalties, which at this point is counting 466 days since their last penalty (which came at Coventry in October 2021). That's two in two games for me so far. Maybe they should try that.

Onwards then.

Our first season has these ambitions before us…

This certainly feels more modest - the ambition is to challenge for the play-offs a few seasons down the line. I certainly like the idea of trying to challenge for play-off places straight out of the gate, and certainly think we could do given the Championship's helter skelter nature, but we'll just have to figure it out.

To try and meet these aims, I have a £1million transfer budget, space of a grand a week on the wage bill, and this group of players:

I think there is some talent at our disposal towards our goals. We've certainly got a lot of central midfielders in use, and a few decent strikers - with a few in the reserves that might be justified in promotion.

I'm not 100% convinced by our right-backs, and think we could also use an extra attacking midfielder, especially given the injury to Antoine Semenyo. But for our purposes, I think there's a decent squad here, and enough to at least give this top half goal a good challenge. Even if we're not predicted to meet it.

A few formations are under due consideration. The classic FM22 OP Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 is one I would like to try out, but a wing play 4-3-3 has also featured and would line up like this:

So, I guess we'll see what we can do with this group.

There was a while on Football Manager when Bristol City, by hook or by crook, seemed to find a way into the Premier League.

In the FM08-FM13 sequence, the side from Ashton Gate seemed to often end up succeeding in game where their real life equivalents failed in the 2008 Championship play-off final and find their way into the top 20 teams in England, and in the process ending Bristol's distinction as one of England's largest cities yet to enjoy Premier League representation.

As it is, the journey hasn't quite got them there. Two seasons in League One didn't help, with their nearest push since seeing an impressive run to the Carabao Cup semis in 2017/18, including beating Manchester United on the way there.

So, as someone who has managed a lot of Championship clubs to promotion in his FM CV over the years, can I do another Neil Warnock-style run to the top flight and in the process deliver Bristol City top flight success as I did with Sheffield Wednesday and Ipswich in other recent career modes chronicled here.

For the record, I don't have FM23 atm, and did consider downloading a squad update, but will be doing this on FM22's vanilla database just for funsies.

So… that World Cup eh? Sure was an interesting one.

Season 4 is upon us as we begin a second season in the Premier League. Aspirations can only be really to make it to another one as we still largely have a Champ/L1 squad that we managed to get to 14th.

To that end, new signings were targeted and have duly been purchased…

Apologies for the dreadful job I did of combining the ones split either side of the season.

I wanted 2 new right-backs, an extra winger and an extra option to play number 10 off the strikes. Got the lot. Djed Spence was first in as a good extra option to play as a right-sided utility player, but the first choice right-back is likelier going to be Mads Roerslev after I found out the well-regarded Brentford right-back was transfer listed.

In-between was the signing I didn't necessarily need but felt was too good to ignore. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall had been sold by Leicester to Burnley and did a decent job despite Burnley being relegated. It took a whopping fee, but he's been bought in and is an immediate presence to improve my midfield.

With Harry Darling struggling and a highly regarded newgen defender arguably too soon to throw in, I wanted a PL-experienced CB to join and got it in the form of Lewis Gibson on a free transfer from Everton, with the idea he'll be a back-up to Edmundson, Franco and Woolfenden, who remain as my first choice 3.

Signing our extra options going forward took longer, but came through. An oddly structured deal was agreed with Nottingham Forest to sign superstar winger Brennan Johnson, while I made a late choice to sign Diego Rossi, who becomes our latest signing from the USA after I bought the Uruguayan international in from LAFC.

On paper, these should be upgrades on our squad. Getting rid of those I didn't want, however, proved a challenge. Idris El Mizouni joined a team in Tunisia, Harry Darling was sold to Derby and was nearly followed by Ben Morris until he turned down their contract, Ethan Robson made a somewhat surprise move to League 2 Burton Albion, and we shipped out a ton of other bodies on loan. Kane Vincent-Young, Wes Burns, Jordan Shipley, Tyreese Simpson, George McEachran and a ton of young kids made loans, some of whom I wanted shot of but proved oddly hard to get rid of.

Oh yeah. We also opted not to renew the loan deals for Marcel Lavinier and Elliot Anderson. The former had been great in his two seasons on loan from Spurs but they wanted too much, while Anderson didn't do enough for me in his single season on loan from Newcastle.

In the eyes of my assistant, I should be putting my faith in this lot…

I'm not sure how I'll use it in practice tbh, however.

Anyway, the season preview suggests…

… that it's going to be a struggle. Again. Least Mikel Arteta got Swansea promoted to give us some company at the bottom in the expected table. But we defied the odds last season and I wanna be confident we can do it again.

Pre-season treated us to this…

A mixed bag overall, but going unbeaten is a decent place to be in as we prepare for it. Scoring seven goals in draws with Ajax and Inter Milan is the kind of WTF factor pre-season is good at delivering, which if nothing else might provide those who attended with a sign we're decent. Drawing with Birmingham City was a disappointment but beating AC Milan… that's a good sign right?

Anyway, the season is now here and we must begin with a home contest against Fulham. Second time in our four seasons that we begin our campaign at home to the West Londoners - curiously in the only two seasons we've been in the same tier as the team from Craven Cottage.

Making my first team of the new campaign were…

Christensen - Roerslev, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Samu, Dewsbury-Hall - Semenyo, Rossi, Johnson - Piroe

Last time we opened a season at home to Fulham produced a 1-0 home win. So, what about this time?

A 1-0 home win again, you say? Delightful stuff Geoff.

This one was decided early on. Debutant Rossi with one of the touches I was hoping for with fine control and the pass to set away Piroe, who found the winning goal inside the opening six minutes.

In truth, we could have won this one by a bigger and better margin. But winning games counts at this level, as proven last season when we won 5 out of 6 games against the 3 teams who went down. If we need to do this kind of thing again, we are off to a splendid start.

More of a test would follow in our next game, mind. That would be an early season visit to Anfield, and to face reigning champions Liverpool. Oh goodie.

Maybe this is the sign of a bold team after it's debut campaign or the sign of an idiot, but I stuck with the 4-2-3-1 positive approach, picking…

Christensen - Roerslev, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Samu - Johnson, Rossi, Holland - Piroe

So. Anfield. Would we grab something here?

That perhaps went as well as expected tbh.

No shots on target at all in the 90 minutes, with the game duly spent on the backfoot hoping for Liverpool not to hurt us and our goal difference too severely. In the end they settled for 3, compared to the 4 they struck in this fixture last season, which… Progress?

There's not a lot more I can say about this one really. We fell behind to Van Dijk early on, and were never really in this one. So let's move on.

That would be in the form of the Carabao Cup, as faced Oxford United. In theory, we could have a kind of advantage in this one, given the side from the 3-sided stadium (assuming they're still at the Kassam Stadium) loaned both Shipley and Simpson from us, and neither is allowed to play here.

That's the theory anyway. Aiming to avoid being on the wrong side of a cup upset would be this 11…

Hladky - Roerslev, Woolfenden, Gibson, Bello - Choudhury, Dewsbury-Hall - Spence, Harper, Shashoua - Semenyo

So in short, a few of our first choice picks from last year came in. But would they yield a win?

Success is success in this game I guess.

It helped that we started Dewsbury-Hall and he duly did the job, scoring early on then setting one up five minutes later for Harper to strike. We dominated the first half and added another one when Harper set up Semenyo.

Yet we seemed to coast for a while in the second half, and nearly paid for that when Oxford scored two goals in just under 20 minutes to get back into it. But then Oxford defender Curtis Tilt accidentally turned the ball home after a free-kick had been partially cleared, and we duly made the most of such fortune. 4-2, game up.

Wrapping up August, meanwhile, was a trip to Birmingham and a match against Aston Villa.

Aiming to take the points at Villa Park would be…

Christenen - Roerslev, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Samu, Dewsbury-Hall - Johnson, Rossi, Shashoua - Piroe

Would victory come our way?

Nope.

Mariano put Villa in front and for all that we did create a healthy number of chances, we weren't good at turning them into goals. So we lose back-to-back PL games.

I suppose 1 win from our first 3 is OK but it's nothing special, and we want to stay up. So let's see what we can do from our September fixtures next time out.

Think I'm just lucky. I know 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress, which has been my usual formation, is seen as overpowered on FM22 but equally I could easily try that every game and get mullered. This was almost like an Allardyce-like arrangement - win all the six pointers, sneak a few draws here and there, jobs a good'un.

With our Premier League survival secured, there's an argument the pressure is off for our final 3 games of season 3 as Ipswich Town boss.

That might well be the case, particularly as we are several points clear of the teams below and a similar amount off the top half. But I don't like losing games. So I wanted to see if we could grab an extra win for the road, starting with our trip to face Brentford.

Oddly this ended up being the Monday night game, meaning the game's TV companies would be showing 12th v 14th… probably not the biggest audience ever.

The starting line-up was a tweaked one as we tried out some players. Namely…

Christensen - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Franco, Bello - Choudhury, Samu - Knauff, Twine, Morris - Shashoua

Hmmm… nothing much of note tbh. We ended up resting top scorer Joel Piroe, and lacked goal accuracy with the Dutchman not involved. Brentford had one stand-out high xG chance, but in truth, neither side really created a lot to write home about.

So that was a bit meh.

Next up, we welcomed Everton to Suffolk in the hope of grabbing victory in our final home match of the season, in a game again selected for Monday night transmission despite being between two teams in midtable. Why, I do not know.

Making this starting 11 would be…

Hladky - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Bello - Choudhury, Harper - Gooch, Anderson, Holland - Piroe

Would we sign off our home campaign with a win?

Alas, we end a decent year at home on a bit of a whimper.

We were facing an uphill task from the moment Dele Alli put Everton ahead inside the opening five minutes and rarely looked like getting into it from there. Periodically we created the odd chance here and there, but nothing really spectacularly troubling for Jordan Pickford and a goal by Marcus Edwards late on wrapped up the points for our guests from Merseyside.

Shame, but that's football. Not that it got that much easier for our final match of the season, as we travelled to face Carabao Cup winners Newcastle United. We'd also be doing so without Elliot Anderson, with his final game being played due to his loan from SJP and in truth, we weren't impressed by him to consider bringing him back next season. Not least as the Mags want £26million for us to do so.

Aiming to win in our final assignment were…

Christensen - Woolfenden, Darling, Franco, Lavinier - Samu, Choudhury, Harper - Gooch, Shashoua, Holland

Could we sign off for the summer in style?

Instead of signing off in style, we let Newcastle wave goodbye to the campaign with the points. Bah.

We were up against it pretty much straight away, with Allan Saint-Maximin scoring an opener and less than 2 minutes later, Raul Jimenez rifled in a penalty. Pedro Goncalves' strike made it 3 just before the break and it was pretty much over as a contest from there.

We'd actually created the odd chance here and there and would grab a goal just after the break through Nathan Holland, though the sense this game had gone was proven by the fact we gave run outs to young subs Tawanda Chirewa and Jack Manly, as we seek to show we can actually give minutes to youth prospects.

We conceded one more for the road, this time to Jimenez, as we signed off from the season with a thumping loss at St James' Park.

This meant no win in our last five games of season 3, although we'd done the work to prove that wouldn't be a disaster.

Given the low expectations many had for us coming up into the Premier League, 14th place is a fine achievement. 17 draws did a fair wedge of heavy lifting in the end - this was the highest in the Premier League - but we have ourselves a decent platform to build on.

In the summer, my work has to be on finding the players that can help us build on this. My budget to do this is…

£50million-odd. I think we can sign a few decent players for that, even if pay rises means the wage bill might be a bit marginal.

Time for a look at the best 11 of the season…

Such is the level of squad rotation that we deployed that I doubt I ever actually selected this starting line-up all in the same game together. The fact our main CMs snuck in with a sub-6.7 rating across all their appearances does demonstrate this is an area of the pitch to develop, although it's pleasing to see Edmundson and Woolfenden do well to step up to the PL challenge having been with us from the start.

So that concludes season 3, and arguably the best achievement so far. It was already an escalating level of difficulty but I didn't think we'd stay up going into this, or at least, we'd be 17th. To come 14th with an 8 point margin on the bottom 3 and having rarely looked like we might be in trouble is a great achievement.

Whether it was worth the board jumping to this big announcement is another question

This is gonna be a while off though. So tune in next time when we prepare for season 4 as Ipswich Town boss, and aim to keep Ipswich Town up for a second consecutive season.

Oh yeah. Don't be shy, comments welcome.

The time has come for one more push, where a few more positive results should confirm us safe even before May starts. Which, given we were forecast to finish last and by wages should be last a long way, is a magnificent achievement.

A few big games are also coming up as well, with Aston Villa and Burnley among our upcoming fixtures, even if tougher looking tests against Liverpool and Spurs are then due to follow.

First of all are Villa, who actually got the Champions League places in season 1 but begin our meeting just one place and point above us in a disappointing season.

My starting line-up for this one would be…

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Harper - Shashoua, Anderson, Morris - Semenyo

A few reshuffles it is then. Would we do something good here?

Another draw for the list.

Leon Bailey snuck in an opener and our joy at an immediate potential leveller was swiftly annulled when Semenyo had a prospective equaliser disallowed. In truth, the second half was low quality with neither one of us actually doing well, but we managed to break the boredom in the best manner with around a quarter of an hour to go as Shashoua tapped in an equaliser.

Mariano had a late winner for Villa disallowed by VAR, and despite both of us putting decent chances together late on, there was no winner. So, all square.

A crucial game then followed. Defeat to Burnley could induce some anxieties ahead of a few late dicey games, but victory would in all practical terms confirm our survival. So I would like to see us get the job done.

Seeking a key victory were this selection….

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Samu, Harper - Anderson, Shashoua, Semenyo - Piroe

Can we do the job and defeat a big rival in the battle for survival?

Job done. Get the fuck in there.

This was a generally low quality game, and one that could well have ended differently had Dwight McNeil not had a goal disallowed.

We very much made the most of this misfortune when Semenyo turned in Piroe's knockdown and smashed the ball home from close range. Burnley had a few opportunities after that, but we largely kept them at arms length and saw the job through, defeating the Clarets in their own backyard to move 10 points clear of the relegation zone with 5 games to go.

Basically, we should have this. The majority of the work has been done and we should be on course to stay afloat.

That should be a good combo. Next up may be back-to-back games at our home, but leaders Liverpool and a Spurs team challenging for top 4 are next up, and winning either one of these games will be a big effort.

Still, Liverpool up first. Let's try our luck, with this team chosen to try and take down the leaders…

Christensen - Woolfenden, Edmundson, Franco - Vincent-Young, Samu, Anderson, Thompson - Shashoua, Piroe, Semenyo

Something of a pivot for this one, as while we don't play 3 at the back very often, we do have it trained for special occasions.

Would we pull off the upset?

The draw specialists do it again, and get a very decent result as well.

This was a curious contest in many respects. We stunned Liverpool as Semyno turned in an early goal, and were keeping Liverpool under control right up until the half hour mark, at which point Joel Gomez turned the ball in.

We should've taken control of the contest when Andy Robertson was dismissed, but instead Mo Salah got a goal for the Reds. Yet just ten minutes later, substitute Twine put us back on level terms with a well taken finish.

No more goals were scored after that, so we took a very credible point from battling against the team in pole position to win the Premier League under Jurgen Klopp with his almost Galacticos type 11.

Spurs were next up, and a decent result would confirm that we were mathematically secure of survival at our first attempt.

Aiming to take Spurs down would be…

Christensen - Woolfenden, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Samu, Harper - Shashoua, Twine, Semenyo - Piroe

Could we do it?

Another draw. We're weirdly good at this, given this is our 16th draw of the season - 3 more than the next highest.

For a while, we actually did look like we might be on to take the lead. But we couldn't make the most of chances in the period when it looked like we might take the lead, and instead Spurs threatened a late goal of their own, although in the end, we resisted adequately enough and prevented them from winning the match.

Still, back-to-back draws against Liverpool and Spurs at home is a sure sign that we belong at this level imo.

This result would however have a byproduct…

We've only gone and bloody well done it.

Sure, getting 16 draws isn't the best of ways, but we were predicted to prop up the Premier League. It helped we won 5 out of 6 games against the teams in the bottom 3, but it still counts.

My goal was to keep Ipswich Town in the Premier League in our first season in the top flight, and I wasn't entirely convinced we'd do it, but in the end, we were rarely so deep that I thought we were doomed. It's job done, as demonstrated by the table below.

Three games remain of our season, and we have an 11 point lead on Burnley. Nobody has been officially relegated yet, with Bournemouth and Crystal Palace still having some hope they can leapfrog Leeds, even if Burnley look the biggest threat to the West Yorkshire side.

But screw that argument. We are staying up, say, we are staying up. Get in!

In some respect this takes the pressure off, as we achieved what we needed to. But I'd like to see us go out on a high all the same, with final games against Brentford, Everton and Newcastle to come and wrap up the season. So let's see if we can grab some more joy for the road.

A fairly important game for us was next in sequence, as we welcomed Leeds United to Portman Road. The team from West Yorkshire are below us in the table, so a win could very well open the door for us to get one step closer to confirming survival.

Making the teamsheet were…

Hladky - Lavinier, Darling, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Samu - Gooch, Anderson, Shashoua - Piroe

A win would be a huge result in our survival fight. Would we grab it?

This is a bit of a less than ideal result tbh.

We should really have won . Much as we started slowly and conceded an opening goal to Dia, we improved quickly. Piroe equalised with a penalty just before the half-hour and it was largely us who had chances. But we never found a second, and instead Leeds made us pay as Dia made it 2-1. Dia also scored a further goal only to have it disallowed, but after their winner went in, we seemed to just run out of ideas.

In a less than ideal follow-up, we had to travel to Old Trafford to take on a Manchester United team who are reigning champions and still have an outside shot at regaining their title. They beat us 5-1 at home in a game we'd actually dominated, so we had been given a difficult task indeed.

We opted to reshuffle, changing formation and personnel to this tweaked version…

Christensen - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Franco, Thompson - Harper, Choudhury, Samu - Gooch, Piroe, Semenyo

Manchester United away then. Would we pull off a surprise?

Nevermind.

We actually did well to take the lead through Semenyo after he was first to Lavinier's cross, and for 35 minutes or so we were able to keep an ever-escalating Manchester United attacking squad at bay.

Then sure enough, Vitinha and Mbappe scored either side of the break, and we were back to being up against it. Pogba made it 3-1 just after the hour and it needed a few stops by the recalled Christensen to stop it getting even worse from there.

That match was, in truth, never likely to be one to provide us the biggest reward and getting us closer to survival. This next one, however, was. One of our few away wins so far came at Selhurst Park, when we beat Crystal Palace and took victory over an Eagles side who have spent most of this season in the relegation zone.

Now the time had come to try and get a very necessary repeat, and try to beat Palace again. Doing that would very much keep us in pole position to stay afloat.

Our selection for this one would be…

Chirstensen - Woolfenden, Darling, Edmundson, Bello - Samu, Harper - Semenyo, Anderson, Shashoua - Piroe

Would this gang succeed?

Victory shall be ours. Hallelujah.

We missed a great chance when Piroe got one wrong just before the break and it looked like it might not be our day. But a sustained spell of pressure yielded rewards when Shashoua scored our goal just after the hour. From there, we managed it well enough, preventing Palace from creating too much (save for one great chance at the end denied by Christensen) and took home a much needed three points.

So yay us. We're inching closer to survival, and it turns out my performance is gaining admirers…

With Celtic boss Ange Postecoglu moving south to take the Leeds job, the Glasgow club offered me an interview thinking I might be a suitable enough candidate to move north of the border.

Flattering, but not for me at this time. The goal isn't to stay at Ipswich until this save wraps up, but it's too soon to seek pastures new.

Moving on from that distraction, we had another big game to look forward to in the form of a trip up the road to our East Anglian rivals at Carrow Road. Norwich City are going for a top half finish, while we're happy just to be sticking around.

Aiming to take a great success that would delight our fans would be…

Christensen - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Choudhury, Harper - Gooch, Anderson, Shashoua - Piroe

Could we go to Norwich and win?

No win, no loss. This was a pretty low quality game in truth. Norwich had the best chances as our attack failed to show up, but in truth, neither side really deserved to win this one.

So let's move on.

That was the last game before a March international break, so it seems as good a time as any to check the latest Premier League table and this is where we're presently at…

Ten points clear with 7 to go. A few more points will take us above that magic 40 point mark, though the gap to Burnley and Bournemouth means it's possible 35 might just be enough.

I'd like to taste some more victories though. So let's see where we get in our final few fixtures.

While we've pootled along efficiently enough in our Premier League debut season, we have won all of just 4 games in the top flight so far. One of those was against Bournemouth, so repeating the feat to complete a home and away double over the Cherries feels like it would be extremely helpful in our goal to stay up.

Taking to the turf for this big one would be:

Hladky - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Choudhury, Harper - Knauff, Shashoua, Morris - Piroe

The big call is a start for Hladky over Christensen in goal, as arguably is bringing back Woolfenden over Franco and throwing in our new loan signing Knauff from the start.

Would these selection gambles pay off and help us to a big three points?

We did it! Get in.

We seized an early lead courtesy of Piroe, who finished from Shashoua's pass, and ground it out from there, resisting Bournemouth's disparate attempts to level (including a period of pressure from about 60-80 minutes) before breaking to seal the deal through a late second by substitute Twine.

This felt like an important three points, and a necessary one. We arrived with a six point lead on the relegation zone and a defeat would've guaranteed that advantage being eroded, especially given it would've given confidence to those below that we are catachable.

Now we needed to turn focus onto the FA Cup. We made it into Round 4, and that bought us a tie against another PL struggler in the form of West Ham.

Making my team were:

Hladky - Vincent-Young, Darling, Franco, Bello - Choudhury, Samu - Gooch, Anderson, Knauff  - Piroe

We beat West Ham at Portman Road in the Premier League a few weeks earlier. Would lightning strike twice?

A replay is going to be required then.

This was a low quality game. We had the better of the first half when we got going but were lucky not to concede in a largely uninspired second half, with Kurt Zouma having a late winner disallowed.

So that means a replay. Joy.

That battle is of course it's own one in a few weeks. Before that, we had a home Premier League match against Southampton to worry about.

This was the reverse of the opening fixture of the season, which had seen us take a credible point off the Saints at St Mary's, not least as Southampton have a genuine shot at European football for next season and would provide us with another tough test. Though they all are at this level ofc.

Aiming to go one better than the opening day were…

Hladky - Woolfenden, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Samu, El Mizouni - Gooch, Anderson, Holland - Piroe

So, would we do the business here?

No we would not.

We made a glorious start as we got the luck of Southampton have an early goal disallowed before Piroe swept in Thompson's cross.

But after keeping Southampton at bay for most of the first half, we fell asleep at the end of the first half to allow Loren to equalise before Sadiq - the scorer of the disallowed goal at 0-0 - got himself on the scoresheet.

We had over half an hour to try and pinch something off the Saints, and yet… nothing. It's like our attack just gave up, even with the mentality change and switching names. So frustrating and annoying.

Naturally, I would expect better from the FA Cup replay against West Ham, which followed next by giving both ourselves and the Hammers an extra contest.

Making the team for this one after a bit of a reshuffle were…

Christensen - Vincent-Young, Woolfenden, Franco, Bello - Choudhury, Harper - Gooch, Twine, Knauff - Piroe

Would this be a success?

Less said about that one the better tbh.

We matched West Ham early on even after the setback of Escalante's opener. But a penalty for a foul by Franco tipped this in West Ham's favour, with Soucek rolling it in before Bowen scored after the break. We did have a few chances late on, but by then the game had already gone.

So that was a misfire if we're being honest with ourselves.

Next up was a chance to do better, as we had a bit of a relegation six pointer in the form of a trip to Brighton, who had been promoted with us last season. I say with us, they absolutely crushed the Championship whereas we had to win the play-off lottery, though so far, we're matching them as far as keeping our heads above water.

Looking to succeed where we didn't last season and take a victory over the Seagulls would be…

Hladky - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Choudhury, El Mizouni - Gooch, Anderson, Shashoua - Piroe

Would we win out here?

All square at the AMEX then.

Frankly Brighton should've won this one. They were the better team with plenty of chances but just couldn't beat Hladky, who was in great form, and we pounced through Anderson with just over 20 to go.

However poor defending gave Kozlowski a tap-in and a quickfire equaliser and we went back to holding on. Managed that though.

A point is a pretty respectable outcome if we're being honest with ourselves from this one.

So ends our commitments in February, so just time for a quick look at the Premier League table as we move ever closer to the end of the season.

As you can see, we are still in a very advantageous position when it comes to securing our Premier League status. While we've won only 5 games, we still hold a commanding 10 point lead on the relegation zone, and have some big games against Leeds, Crystal Palace, Aston Villa and Burnley. Win those 4 would take us onto 39 points, and that would in all probability be enough.

So, let's keep at it. Survival is achievable despite our paltry wage budget, Championship-level squad and whatnot. But it would be a pisser if we fell apart from here, lost the lot and went down. So let's fucking have it.

Early on in the January window, we began to make some moves in the outbound direction. Connor Chaplin and Sam Morsy were out of contract in the summer, and we managed to get both out the door. Chaplin made a £225k move to Championship strugglers Cardiff City, whilst Wolverhampton-born Egyptian international Morsy initially agreed an end-of-season free move to Zamalek but had it bought forward for £150 grand.

This also meant a re-allocation of something important, as although he wasn't playing a lot, Morsy was still captain. So defender George Edmundson, who had been vice-vice-captain for most of the season, was promoted to being the new outright captain.

An improving Arsenal, who are beginning to get back into European place contention after a slow start, would be a tricky first place to mark this milestone. But we had to go anyway.

Making the squad for our visit to the Emirates would be…

Christensen - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Choudhury, El Mizouni - Gooch, Anderson, Semenyo - Piroe

Considering who we are, we've gone pretty attacking. Would this pay dividends?

That's a handy result if I'm totally fair.

Arsenal didn't necessarily batter us per say, but they did have a consistent enough string of chances and struck first when a foul by Thompson gave them a penalty that Iheanacho duly scored.

After the break, Arsenal were consistently creating chances but didn't find that killer second goal and instead, we pulled a fast one on them when Semenyo headed in Gooch's cross from close range. We duly rode it out from there, taking an unlikely but impressive point.

Indeed, we've actually not had a terrible return at the big clubs, taking points from our visits to Spurs and Man City before this, and a draw at Arsenal is not to be sniffed at.

Just as well we had the precedent of a draw at Man City to go on, given our next assignment was to welcome them to Portman Road. Albeit this time a very different Manchester City, given that since our last meeting, they've appointed Mauricio Pochettino as manager. Indeed, this is the former Spurs and PSG manager's first game as Man City head honcho after they sacked Thomas Tuchel.

With trepidation, we looked to see if we could pull off a surprise against the big spenders from East Manchester, with this squad taking the wheel…

Christensen - Vincent-Young, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, El Mizouni - Gooch, Harper, Shashoua - Semenyo

Would we manage something unexpected?

Yeah… not this time. But then a 3-1 defeat is perhaps the better end of outcomes one might get now against the spending power of this lot.

We actually did well to stay in the game, responding well enough to a pair of Julian Alvarez stunners with Semenyo scoring just a minute after Man City's second and we were still keeping in the game in the first half.

In the second, however, the away side took control. They frankly should've scored their third a lot sooner, with De Bruyne having one disallowed by VAR and the Belgian missing a penalty, but no matter who we threw on, we couldn't match the challenge and Alvarez scored a cracking free-kick to make it 3-1 and decide the contest in the away team's favour. Drat.

But all we can do at this point is move on. And with that, we have a trip to West Ham United, making this something of a frequent fixture of late given we played them on Boxing Day and have an FA Cup tie with the Hammers also coming up.

Making my starting line-up for the clash at the London Stadium would be…

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Darling, Thompson - Choudhury, Anderson - Holland, Twine, Semenyo - Piroe

Could we take a giant leap towards Premier League survival in a big clash at the one-time London Olympic host venue?

A point isn't bad and we'll absolutely take the gratification that comes with an injury time equaliser but we really do need to convert more of these draws into wins.

All the action came in the second period. West Ham dominated the early phase of the second half and struck through Minamino's fine finish, but in quickfire fashion, Morris came off the bench to equalise.

We would then fall behind after Bergwijn, who set up the opener, scored to put West Ham in front again and we would only manage half-chances and easy stops until finally we broke through at the end thanks to Piroe's finish from a ball by sub Shashoua.

This game was our last commitment of January, meaning it is now time to check out the table.

We've still got enough security ahead of the Premier League relegation zone, with a six point advantage. Admittedly we'd be advised to build on just having 4 victories, but we're getting enough points at a decent rate and keeping those fears at bay for now.

The transfer window is also now up, and the final stages would indeed be busy. We let some people out the door, with Wes Burns, Ethan Robson and youngster Michael Mellon making loan exits.

Meanwhile, we had some incoming work to do in parallel. First in was German winger Ansgar Knauff, signed on loan from Borussia Dortmund (and who indeed scored in the Europa League semis for Frankfurt at West Ham last night), with the hope he'd provide us something different.

Then we followed up his arrival with two permanent signings. First in was Portuguese midfielder Samu, bought to the club for an installment-oriented £5million move from Spanish second tier side Almeria.

After that came in a challenger to Thompson's monopoly at left-back, as we purchased American full-back George Bello, coming to the club for £3.5million from German outfit Armenia Bielefeld. 

Of course, this splurge at the end of the window didn't change on fundamental stat…

Some football finance types say wages is a key driver for how to expect teams will behave in a league table. By that logic, we should be having a Derby County 2007/08 with our tiny wage bill. Yet we are still ahead of the curve, and if we win a crucial six pointer at Bournemouth in our next game, our position will become even more advantageous.

So let's see if we can get this going in our favour.

Boxing Day has arrived, fully in the busy Christmas period.

We had a home contest against West Ham United, who had actually ended up below us in the table having struggled for form after David Moyes walked out to take the Poland national team Job. Which… interesting.

Aiming to pile on the misery were…

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Robson, Anderson - Gooch, Shashoua, Holland - Piroe

We need 3 points - after all, our only home league win so far was against Bournemouth way back in August. Was this to be the day?

We did it! And about time at home.

This wasn't as showy as beating Bournemouth 5-0, but it still did the trick. Anderson scored a fine drive just after the 20 minute mark, while a very nicely set up goal saw Holland scoot one in just after the break. West Ham had the odd chance here and there, but not enough to stop us from taking the victory.

Good thing too given I didn't really fancy our chances in our following games. First all of was a trip to the King Power Stadium to face a Leicester team that's ended up challenging for a Champions League position.

Making this team would be…

Christensen - Vincent-Young, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Robson, Anderson - Gooch, Shashoua, Holland - Piroe

With no game between Boxing Day and New Year's Day, I did name a relatively stable setarting line-up.

That didn't go so well, alas.

I wouldn't say we were necessarily outclassed, but it didn't exactly go well either. Poulsen put them ahead, we missed a glorious chance to equalise, Pulsen duly scored again in first half stoppage time, and we ambled to the end before substitute Jamie Vardy put us out of our misery late on.

Lucky us, therefore, to get Chelsea at home next and fight a side in with a title shot.

Aiming to prove this time was the time for an upset were…

Christensen - Vincent-Young, Woolfenden, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Harper - Semenyo, Twine, Morris - Piroe

Bit more of a shuffle in use here, although one suspected we'd be in for a tough time either way.

Would we manage something here?

Well, winning this one was a long shot but our attacking output… jeez. We had one off-target shot all game, and Chelsea might as well have left their keeper and defence at home with such numbers.

The only really doubt was Chelsea being punished for an oddly lackadaisical attitude where a long period of the second half saw nothing happen and the Blues rarely look like building on Kai Havertz's opener. Oddly, our one shot of the game woke them up into thinking they might blow it, so they duly pressed again until Timo Werner made it 2-0.

So we move on. Frankly, it's the least we can do after such a misfire.

The January window is now open, meanwhile, and my attitude is to find the right bargain. We only have roughly £5million to work with, so it's not going to be a big spending spree, but arguably nor do we need it to be. A few  back-up players will be sent on the merry way, so it's as much about strengthening on them.

Before that, lower league outfit Walsall were making the trip to our place for an FA Cup Third Round tie.

Aiming to avoid a shock would be…

White - Vincent-Young, Woolfenden, Darling, Thompson - Robson, El Mizouni - Gooch, Twine, Morris - Semenyo

Sort of a hybrid of reserve and first-team, including the choice of Bert White in goal. So, how would we do?

Well we did it the hard way but it counts I guess.

I was fearing the worst when Walsall stunned us with a long ranger that crashed home. But as the game went on, we began to show our now Premier League qualities and hit them hard. Quickfire goals from set-pieces by Darling and Morris turned the scoreline on its head, before a nice goal by Twine just after the restart sealed this one in our favour.

Happily, we avoid the Cup upset and can move on to a 4th Round tie against West Ham United, who may or may not have to take on our new signings. If we can figure out who they are of course.

After the last pre-Christmas international break, I wanted to respond with victories. Unfortunately for us, a trip to Anfield was next in the diary for us.

Looking to make mission impossible a success would be this lot…

Christensen - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Harper, Anderson, Robson - Gooch, Morris, Twine

Very much a rotated squad. One idea had been to start Hladky, who wants game time, but he suffered a major injury shortly into the international break so is out for a while, with academy grad Bert White stepping up as third choice keeper.

So, would we pull off something a bit special?

That went probably about as well as to be expected tbh. Still a borderline L1/Champ squad against a team featuring new £100M+ signing Vlahovic on top of Salah and Mane.

There isn't really much more to say tbh. So let's move on.

This next one might be a bit more winnable and crucial, as we host our East Anglian rivals Norwich City in the first derby of the season.

I suspect this will be an interesting contest. So let's see how this lot can fare in such a high-pressure scenario…

Christensen - Vincent-Young, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Anderson - Gooch, Shashoua, Holland - Piroe

Some rotation was utilised for the last game in all truth, although an injury to Lavinier didn't help. So let's see if we can make this a success.

Hmmmm… Plenty to ponder.

We started pretty poorly, with Tzolis giving Norwich an early-ish lead and the visitors likelier to score in the early part of the contest. Until the latter stages of the half, we'd yet to really get going until Norwich rather generously gave us a penalty that Piroe duly scored from.

In truth that was our best chance. A tight second half did see us create a little more before Norwich nearly snuck one at the end. In truth draw was perhaps enough, even if it does little to end a winless run that is dragging on a bit.

Maybe the next contest would be more to our liking, as we travelled to face surprise early strugglers Aston Villa, for whom Steven Gerrard is now under pressure. Villa actually qualified 4th in second one and made it to the Champions League quarters in year two, but with the Brummie club in the bottom 6 they need a result as much as we do.

Aiming to pile on the pain at Villa Park would be another new team in the form of…

Christensen - Vincent-Young, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Harper - Semenyo, Twine, Shashoua - Piroe

Would we find this a successful trip?

Ah that sucks.

We started well, resisted a brief spell of Villa pressure, and swept in front when Semenyo received a Piroe flick on and placed it into the back of the net.

For a while offered next to nothing but the decision to disallow Justin Kluivert's goal motivated them, they duly began to come at us a bit more, and sure enough Kluivert grabbed a late equaliser.

This is also infuriating in some respects as this game, the preceding one against Norwich and the game against Burnley before the international break were all huge opportunities for a win that we couldn't take. So it felt essential we didn't let another opportunity for a win pass us by in the next match, as we travelled to face bottom side Crystal Palace.

The teamsheet features…

Christensen - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Harper - Semenyo, Shashoua, Holland - Piroe

A win feels essential tbh. Would we nab one?

Hallelujah 3 points on the board.

This did not look on the cards when inside the opening minute, Enriquez received a through pass, rounded Christensen and scored. Yet we turned it around pretty well, as Piroe struck a near-immediate leveller before Shashoua came in with a fine strike.

A fairly low quality game ended up being much higher scoring than the xG suggested, with a 4th going in through Enriquez just after half-time but Franco heading home Holland's perfectly weighted free-kick to make it 3-2 just under half an hour from the end. Palace created surprisingly little in response, allowing us to take just a 3rd Premier League win of the season and a pretty important one.

Simply put, we needed this - a first win in 9 Premier League matches stops a slide towards the drop that was beginning to kick in and make me feel worried.

It's also just as well it came here, as I didn't exactly rate our chances of ending it in our next assignment, as we welcomed season 2's Premier League winners Manchester United to Portman Road.

We did receive a little boost pre-game, however, as it turned out injury had ruled out both Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappe. But the odds were still stacked against us.

Nevertheless, this squad was named to try and pull off a remarkable result…

Christensen - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Franco, Vincent-Young - Choudhury, El Mizouni - Semenyo, Harper, Holland - Piroe

Could we stun the reigning champions?

I don't even know where to start with this one. We were great going forward but David de Gea proved to be unstoppable, whereas everything they hit just went in.

We certainly held our own in the first half. Just moments after Jadon Sancho put the visitors in front, Nathan Holland equalised and if anything we were creating the chances to make it 2-1.

But it seemed as though De Gea was pissed at losing his clean sheet bonus and began to put in one of those De Gea style superman performances. The same couldn't be said for our keeper Christensen, as a long-ranger by Paul Pogba flew past him, followed moments later by a second for Sancho.

Pogba then crashed in a free-kick before Franco's own goal rubbed in further salt to our wounds, as did losing Semenyo to injury and yet more De Gea magic at the end.

All in all, a thoroughly aggravating afternoon. But if nothing else, we learned our forward players aren't out of their depth at this level. So the challenge was now to score against hopefully more pliable opponents.

Entering the chat are Leeds United, who we beat at Elland Road in the Carabao Cup a few weeks earlier.

Aiming to make this trip a success would be…

Christensen - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Choudhury, Anderson - Shashoua, Twine, Holland - Piroe

Would we grab 3 points from this trip to West Yorkshire to go with our EFL Cup triumph but a few weeks ago?

Less said about this one the better tbh. We basically ended up putting in an anti-football performance, earning an FA fine and criticism for multiple yellows, while Leeds found Christensen is less charitable form than Manchester United had the previous weekend.

Onwards then. And with it a test against a side promoted with us last season in the form of Brighton & Hove Albion in our last contest before Christmas.

Looking to get our fans one last minute Christmas present out of a year that included us getting promoted would be…

Christensen - Vincent-Young, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Robson, Harper - Gooch, Twine, Shashoua - Semenyo

Feels like we need a win, having not won at home since our first PL game played at Portman Road against Bournemouth back in August. Would this be the day?

Not quite.

In truth we were second best. A close range tap-in by Semenyo to put us in front came against the run of play and Petkovic duly equalised a few moments later. We actually did have a fair few chances in parallel to our guests as both teams tried for a second half winner, though we weren't helped when Semenyo collected two yellows and got dismissed. Though if I'm fair the only surprise about us getting a red is that it wasn't Morsy (who got a few in the first 2 seasons) or Choudhury (who ironically I think was suspended).

This was the last game before Christmas, so time for a quick glance at the Christmas Day Premier League table.

Well I wasn't exactly expecting us to be up there with Liverpool, Chelsea and the other top end challengers tbf. But given we have the league's smallest salary and budget, to be 5 points clear of the relegation zone is a pretty remarkable achievement.

Not that we can rest on our laurels on course. It's one thing have a points-per-game number that indicates we should probably stay up, but we need to get going. Draws aren't gonna be enough, so let's keep pushing.

Next up after the international break, we welcomed Leicester City to Suffolk. The Foxes were relegated from the PL alongside Ipswich in 2002, but while Leicester recovered in a rather famous manner (2016), it's taken us the long way round to get there.

Making my starting squad would be the following faces…

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Darling, Vincent-Young - Choudhury, Harper - Gooch, Anderson, Shashoua - Piroe

I want a win, given we're without one at home in a while. So could we manage it?

It's not a win but least we have some late drama going in our favour.

This was a mildly chaotic afternoon in the end. Poulsen was basically unchallenged for the Leicester opener but we responded rather well and equalised just a few minutes later when Shashoua swept in Piroe's knockdown.

But the defence duly fell asleep again to allow James Maddison a fine goal. We then should've been punished further after Lavinier gave away a penalty, but Sergio Gomez couldn't beat Christensen.

Really we didn't offer all that much after that. If any goal looked like coming it was for Leicester but then in the 89th minute a foul in the box was spotted by VAR and given, allowing Piroe to sweep it in.

Not convincing by any means, but I'll take a point as this was a tough one.

Having said that, so is the next one. Our following assignment after an already tough contest against Leicester was to turn up the difficulty level and a trip to Man City, who now have Thomas Tuchel in charge. K.

Making the revised squad were to be…

Christensen - Woolfenden, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Harper, Choudhury, El Mizouni - Gooch, Piroe, Shashoua

The odds are very much not in our favour here. But let's see if we can pull off something special…

Now, it would've been quite the story had we held on and we may have to put some work in elsewhere to avoid regretting letting these two points slip. But given the circumstances, a draw is a fine enough result.

Man City were the better team but really the chances weren't all coming to them, and Christensen was saving the ones that did get through to him.

While we had offered little going forward, as things progressed, we felt things might come to us and it did look like we might well have hit the jackpot when we scored first. A foul by Joao Cancelo gave us a free-kick, and a flick on by Piroe landed perfectly for Shashoua to sweep it past Ederson.

Hopes of a win faded quick, mind, as a precise pass from De Bruyne played in Phil Foden to sweep in a Manchester City equaliser. But we were able to resist and prevent the hosts scoring again, and pick up a pretty credible point. So yay us.

Next on our agenda would be another trip to North West England. While our last outing was to the Etihad Stadium and Manchester's blue team, this one was a trip to Liverpool's blues. We may have just faced Everton away in the Premier League, but now we had a Carabao Cup contest over there to fulfil.

This one was a rotational one in the end, as we picked…

Hladky - Woolfenden, Edmundson, Darling, Thompson - Anderson, Robson, El Mizouni - Holland, Morris, Shashoua

We won at Goodison a few weeks earlier in the league. Could we follow it up by doing so in the cup?

Not this time.

Everton decided not to do what we did and instead turned up with a strong line-up, and sadly it wasn't a big surprise to see them go 2-0 up courtesy of goals in the early stages of each half.

Holland did grab us one back and we did create a good amount of chances in the aftermath as we tried to force penalties. This time, however, it was all to no avail and this is the last time we'll be in this cup for this campaign. Shame.

Naturally, if I was to follow this up by winning the next game, I might look like a managerial genius. Winning the next game however was another difficult test.

Arsenal may have started surprisingly poorly under the new management of Patrick Vieira, but this isn't really the game I'd want if I felt like we could win.

Nevertheless, we persevere and we try to surprise the Gunners with this lot…

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Harper, Choudhury, Anderson - Holland, Piroe, Shashoua

So, could we grab ourselves a boost by winning this one?

Nope.

This started going wrong pretty much straight away when Naby Keita scored and went even further wrong when we missed an open goal after a half of Arsenal dominance.

We weren't overwhelmed per say, but we had nothing in response after Eddie Nketiah made it 2-0.

Having failed to win any of our games since the last international break, the last match before the next international hiatus represented one that we really should be targeting to try and win. 

Ipswich v Burnley isn't exactly the first fixture one might think of as Premier League material, but it is here and we really will enhance our survival prospects considerably by beating a team that is still managed by Sean Dyche. 

Aiming to defeat Dyche and his band of merry men would be…

Hladky - Woolfenden, Edmundson, Franco, Lavinier - Choudhury, Harper - Gooch, Twine, Shashoua - Piroe

The headline grabbing inclusion is a full start for Scott Twine for the first time after his summer move from Stoke City, as well as a PL start for our former number 1 Hladky and a slightly unusual back 4 to compensate for Vincent-Young being injured and Thompson being overplayed.

Victory feels like it's needed in this one. Would we do just that?

I really hope this one doesn't bite us on the bum.

We made a cracking start, as with less than a minute gone, a well worked move ended in Twine releasing Gooch to score.

But we didn't really have the momentum to build on it, allowing Burnley's Barrow to equalise from a Dwight McNeil cross.

If anyone looked likelier to take the 3 points, it was going to be us. But the winner would just never come. Briefly we thought it had done when Piroe bundled in the ball in the final 5 minutes, but VAR piped up, said Piroe's essence was offside, and took away the goal. We duly ran out of ideas and settled for a point.

So with the November international break now upon us, time to check in on the Premier League table…

As you can see, we're still waiting on our third win of the season as a Premier League team, but we still have a healthy amount of points at this stage. After all everyone was calling us as destined to come last, so to be 14th despite not winning our last few games has to count for something.

We need more wins ASAP though, and with any luck, the next few games will provide one. Once we get the likely demolition by Liverpool in the next game out of the way, we might be onto it. But we'll just have to wait and see.

So far we've faced 2 teams that we have faced in the cups and one side who have had recent spells in the EFL. Our first game back after the first international break of the season would however up the ante. This would be our first trip to the new Tottenham stadium, and a chance for our defence to prove it can be PL-capable by taking on the likes of Harry Kane.

This is obviously a different beast to the Spurs that Ipswich beat home and away in their last Premier League campaign in 2001/02. But we can't afford to only go in hope. Why not dream of really announcing our Premier League arrival in style?

Making their way onto the field for this one would be…

Christensen - Woolfenden, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Harper, Choudhury, Shipley - Gooch, Piroe, Holland

A fair few revisions. Switch to a 4-3-3, play Woolfenden slightly out of position at right-back due to Lavinier being ineligible and Vincent-Young unfit, a start for last season's hero Shipley and some of that hit-and-hope feel.

I'll very much take that. 

We actually looked like the better team during the first half with a couple of decent chances and a sense we were frustrating Marcelo Bielsa's Spurs. That hunch would very much look on in the final stages of the first half, when a foul by Skipp gave us a penalty that Piroe smashed past Hugo Lloris.

Spurs did wake up after the break and created a few low quality chances until, with just under half an hour to go, Thomas Lemar scored a proper thunderbastard.

I wouldn't say it was backs against the wall from there necessarily, but we were made to work for it and the point was very much earned thank you kindly.

Not that the difficulty level goes down from here. Next up on our fixture list was Newcastle United, who now have Erik ten Hag as manager (you may have heard of him this week) and have spent many millions of Saudi cash to try and break into the European places.

Aiming to grab three points against our friends from the north were…

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Harper, Robson, Shipley - Gooch, Piroe, Holland

One worry from this one is the loss of Choudhury, who is facing a few weeks out injured after damaging himself in training.

Against another team the great Bobby Robson managed, could we pull off a victory here?

Yikes. Not even close.

This started going wrong nearly immediately when Saint-Maximin waltzed through our defence and scored, and the French star would strike again in first half stopped time.

Following a double change at half-time, we actually began to put together some decent opportunities, with ex-Sunderland man Gooch on wide right looking quite good.

But it was a mirage. We failed to score, and duly conceded again when first Bruno Guimaraes and then Miguel Almiron beat Christensen to complete the rout. In short, terrible day for us.

Moving swiftly on that from that debacle, the next test for us was back in the old Carabao Cup. We'd met the board expectation of reaching Round 3 but now was the time to try and go one better as we faced Leeds United, who are intriguingly enough now managed by former Porto, Chelsea and Spurs gaffer Andre Villas-Boas.

I opted to reshuffle the pack for this one…

Hladky - Vincent-Young, Woolfenden, Darling, Thompson - Morsy, Anderson - Burns, Harper, Morris - Semenyo

Could we prove we got the farce against the Toon out of our system?

Success.

Not the most exciting or entertaining game ever but it all counts. We kept Leeds under control and got the strike that mattered, which came when Morris headed in Vincent-Young's cross. Leeds huffed and puffed but rarely looked like scoring, so we grab a win. Huzzah.

Maybe this tonic is just what we require for our next league outing. That would take us to Goodison Park and to face an Everton team that, like us, enter the contest with just a single league win out of the opening five.

Having rested several players for the midweek Carabao Cup trip to Leeds, this time I went more conventional by selecting…

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Harper, Shipley - Gooch, Shashoua, Morris - Piroe

Will we take something from this one?

First away league win of the season can be ticked off the list.

I can admit this one turned on the dismissal. We started well with Gooch scoring early on and could've had another in the first half, only for a fine free-kick by Amiri to bring Everton level. They then battered us for most of the second half, but the dismissal of Viktor Mykolenko changed it.

Substitute Semenyo scored what could be a big goal for us as we seek to pull off what many are already dismissal as an improbable survival, with an injury time disallowed goal even coming along.

So with that came our second Premier League win of the season. Huzzah. But making it 2 wins in a row in the PL isn't exactly simple, given that our next assignment would be to go to Stamford Bridge.

Curiously, Chelsea now have Pep Guardiola in charge. On a lot of earlier FM22 saves I noted Klopp and Guardiola swapping when the latter leaves Man City, but this version actually saw City replace Pep with Thomas Tuchel, leading to a job swap that sends Guardiola to London.

For this one I decided the time was right to try something out…

Christensen - Edmundson, Darling, Franco - Vincent-Young, Harper, Shipley, Thompson - Gooch, Piroe, Semenyo

Yup. A Conte style thing with 3 defenders, wing-backs and wingers flanking a central striker. Although granted the Chelsea team when he did that could call upon the likes of Diego Costa, Eden Hazard, Pedro, Cesc Fabregas, Victor Moses, etc, and I don't.

Still, we took something off Spurs, which is still a good thing to our credit. So could we pull off a similar surprise here?

Ah.

Ultimately one where we were happy that we only lost 2-0. It looked like being a really abysmal afternoon when Pulisic had one disallowed straight away before Romelu Lukaku grabbed a brace in the form of a header and a penalty.

I genuinely think Chelsea decided to take a foot off the gas then knowing they could control us at arms length. And in fairness, given we only managed 2 shots that weren't anything to write home about, they may have had a point.

At this point it's worth consulting the table, given we now have a few games on record…

It's been a pretty solid start so far tbf. 2 wins in our opening 7 Premier League matches is more than quite a few teams below us (including Arsenal, hilariously), not least given we've had the misfortune of some big names early on.

Our good start changes little, mind. The overall goal remains 17th+, and in all truth probably will be next season as well if we make it there. So far so good though.

In the 1961/62 season, Alf Ramsey lead Ipswich Town to the top fight of English football for the first time and did pretty well for himself. By which I mean, he won the league for both himself in his first top flight season and Ipswich's first top flight season.

That is not my ambition. Unless we somehow get taken over by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk combined and can celebrate by spending £1billion on new players, we are aiming for 17th and higher. But that isn't to downplay the excitement. This is our first Premier League season as Ipswich boss, and I wanna believe we can make an impression.

First out the gates was a trip to play Southampton on the South Coast. We previously faced the Saints in the FA Cup in our first season, narrowly missing out on pulling off an upset. So with this precedent, I wanted to believe we could do quite well here.

Making my first PL starting line-up were…

Hladky - Lavinier, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Anderson - Gooch, Harper, Shashoua - Semenyo

No fewer than 6 full debutants in the starting line-up, if not quite the ones I had perhaps intended, with Joel Piroe on the bench after picking up a pre-season injury.

So how would we get on with day one of our new adventures?

A draw isn't a terrible place to start imo.

Southampton took the lead when Nathan Tella received a pass from Saints debutant Thorgen Hazard and drilled home. But we matched the Saints for large parts of this contest and would eventually equalise through a signature move type of goal - cross from the flank, winger meets it, goal. In this case, it's a new one for it as our summer signing Gooch grabs a debut goal of his own, going some way to meeting the clause whereby we have to pay his ex-club Austin a bonus fee if he grabs 10 goals.

Not a bad opening if I do say so myself.

Next up is a home game against Bournemouth, who - as they were on another save - are groundsharing with Bristol City while a new stadium is built, giving Bournemouth fans just a 75 mile drive to go to any home game. In another kinda fun tidbit, they're also back under the stewardship of Eddie Howe, who has taken over at the Vitality Stadium for a third time as manager after his dismissal by Newcastle.

The first home game of our season would see us name this lot:

Christensen - Lavinier, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Anderson - Gooch, Harper, Holland - Shashoua

Debut for our new keeper Christensen, whilst because I wasn't happy with Semenyo's performance against Southampton and felt Piroe is still only fit for the bench that Shashoua would get to be main striker today.

How would we do this time?

Our first Premier League victory and it wasn't even close. How 'bout dat?

It had started fairly evenly to begin with but our nerves would be settled when Holland received a fine pass from Gooch and drilled it home. In the second half, however, all hell broke loose.

Edmundson extended our lead with a fine header from a corner, demonstrating why I'm very happy to keep him in place alongside our new signing Franco, but we then ran riot. Piroe grabbed his first Ipswich goal off the bench when he made it 3 with 11 minutes to go and then before I knew it, two crosses from another substitute in El Mizouni picked out Franco, who scored with both. Unbelievable stuff.

Such is the relentlessness of football, however, that we didn't exactly have long to savour this result. A few days later and we were back to it, this time taking on League One newboys Northampton Town in the Second Round of the Carabao Cup.

The teamsheet read:

Hladky - Vincent-Young, Darling, Edmundson, Boyes - Morsy, El Mizouni - Holland, Twine, Morris - Piroe

All of 9 changes, with just centre-half Edmundson and winger Holland starting both this one and the weekend. And even then, Holland was shifted from left to right. Piroe also got a first start, as did youngster Morgan Boyes, who joined in January from Scottish side Livingston.

Does the job that.

I had wonder if Piroe was the right signing for our quest to land a goalscorer in the PL, but the Dutchman did the job here. An excellent hat-trick for our summer arrival from Swansea as he single-handedly shoved the Cobblers aside, making it job a good'un and setting up a Third Round trip to Leeds.

Deadline day was next, but our 10 new signings were already done so we didn't have the squad space left. One note is that we terminated the contract of the winger Kyle Edwards, who never really seemed to justify to me why the backroom staff hyped him so much and who is out of place after we signed 4/5 new attacking midfield capable options. So off he went.

September now dawns upon us, and we squeeze in one more game before the international break as we welcome Brentford to Portman Road. This is a reunion with the Bees, who knocked us out of the Carabao Cup in the 4th Round last season.

We've made a very productive start to life in the Premier League, mind, with no defeats in our first 3 in all competitions. 

Names on the teamsheet today were as follows:

Christensen - Lavinir, Edmundson, Franco, Thompson - Choudhury, Anderson - Gooch, Shashoua, Holland - Piroe

Closer to my intended first 11 then. Would we grab ourselves rewards?

Alas, this time, no points for us.

It didn't exactly start well when Sinisterra put Brentford in front straight away, and we were poor in the first half. We would also be unlucky to see Gooch have one disallowed for offside, and our luck very much seemed out when Paulinho (not the ex-Spurs & Barcelona one) made it 2-0.

Yet it seemed to come back in our favour when Brentford's Ricca got sent off for conceding a penalty and Piroe smashed it in. We duly had changes, but instead, a foul by Edmundson at the other end gave Brentford their own spot-kick that Mbeumo duly converted. Balls.

Still, if nothing else, we got an early win. Which feels like we're gonna need such a thing to hold onto, given we have Spurs and Newcastle next and both of those two have plenty of multi-million pound strikers to test our backline with. Fingers crossed we can rise to such challenges.

So, let's begin the build-up to season 3 and our first in the Premier League by taking a look at our transfer business. 

There are two schools of thought here. One is we decide our squad is worthy of a crack at the PL and supplement it with a few expensive options, and the other is we go for a full rebuild.

I chose something approaching the latter. Especially when you look at the outgoing list.

This wasn't necessarily the plan, particularly as we had a fairly low turnover going into the Championship. But clearly I felt this escalation in challenge difficulty coupled with access to around £30million in funds meant we should go for it.

The first two signings were the first necessities. With Nikolaj Moller returning to Arsenal and the likes of Matt Ward, Chris Kane, Joe Pigott & Tyreese Simpson not really being PL material, I figured I needed new strikers. So I bought in two. Bristol City's surprise relegation meant Antoine Semenyo was available and affordable, whilst a structured deal with Swansea was quickly agreed for Joel Piroe. The Dutchman actually wasn't that high a scorer last season, but should slot in well enough.

I then decided to bring in an extra defender, and stumbled onto Argentine international Alan Franco, who comes to Ipswich from the MLS outfit Atlanta United. Like the Piroe signing, it's structured with instalments and a survival bonus. It also allowed us to sell defender Cameron Burgess, who fell down the pecking order last season and has been allowed to join Hearts in Scotland.

Midfielders ended up also being a focus. Hamza Choudhury is tough tackling PL experience who was transfer listed by Real Betis, so comes in, and we also agreed deals for former Spurs youngster Samuel Shashoua, Stoke City's highly regarded attacking midfielder Scott Twine and former Sunderland wideman Lynden Gooch, who came in for a fairly cheap fee from MLS side Austin. We also agreed a loan move for Newcastle's Elliot Anderson, who had been a target last year. How to fit this in with Robson, Morsy, Shipley, El Mizouni, Harper, Burns, Morris, Holland and Chaplin for the midfield and attacking mid is a new challenge.

Danish goalkeeper Oliver Christensen joined from Hertha Berlin for a surprisingly cheap fee, with back-up Christian Walton sold to Beckham's Miami gang, and the other move was to keep a familiar face. After two seasons on loan from Brentford, Dominic Thompson's contract with the Bees expired so we swooped to make him a permanent arrival. Not captured but also done was an extension for Marcel Lavinier, with the Spurs loanee at full-back extended his stay.

Most of our outgoings, by contrast, are loans, with this making a mockery of any FIFA attempt to regulate these. As well as Ward, Kane, Pigott and Simpson, we also sent out Matt Penney and George McEachran from our first team bubble, along with several more youngsters. Players sold, by contrast, raised about £2million, with Burgess, Walton, Lee Evans and youngster Dante Casanova those cleared out.

It is plausible that we will need to show a degree of tactical flexibility, given the myriad challenges we will face and a lot of games where our favoured 4-2-3-1 might not be the way to go about it. Nevertheless, my assistant reckons that when selecting that tactic, we choose this lot…

A solid enough selection. But we'll see how closely we follow this.

By contrast the media prediction went a different way, as we see that we have a pre-season prediction…

… to come stone dead last. 

This is to be expected if I'm being totally honest. We tick so many of the boxes to fulfil this criteria, from being play-off winners to a side that was in League One five minutes ago to a side that has by far the league's smallest annual salary. Though it is kinda fascinating to see how this selection differs from what my assistant considers to be our strongest selection.

Pre-season is now done and dusted, meanwhile, so this is what we did…

As a side-note, we experimented with a 3-4-3 for the Porto and Brugge games. The latter win indicates it may have potential. Though as we beat Bordeaux with our conventional structure, and lost to Porto with it, maybe not.

The season itself proper is now upon us, and this is how we start…

So our first Premier League game takes us to one of the top flight grounds we've thus far seen, in the form of St Mary's and a trip to Southampton. Early games against Bournemouth and Brentford feel like ones we're gonna need to target for points, given it's swiftly followed by many big spending teams predicted for top half finishes.

Still, it's one thing to predict these things. It's another to actually play them. We're not gonna just scrape our way to survival, but will actually have to give it a fight. I want to believe my renovated squad has what it takes to do that, so let's dive on in and see if that hunch is accurate.

The ambition of this save was always to try to get Ipswich Town back into the Premier League. I just didn't expect to have such an opportunity so quickly.

With just one season in the Championship done, we find ourselves in the play-offs and in striking distance of fighting for a place in the Premier League, bringing with it the headaches of trying to manufacture a PL ready squad on a shoestring budget. Sure, some would say my use of the 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress taps in to an OP FM22 staple, but at the end of the day, I could still have got it wrong.

First up as an opponent would be Hull City. The East Yorkshire side have previous experience, winning promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs in 2008 and 2016.

First selection for this grand quest were…

Hladky - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Robson, El Mizouni - Burns, Harper, Shipley - Moller

Could we take an advantage from the first leg?

Advantage us.

This wasn't a straight forward game, mind. Hull's George Honeyman had a goal disallowed early on, and the combination of a goal in the last 20 minutes and our reduction to 10 men when El Mizouni limped off after we made all 3 changes hurt us.

We did just enough though. Shipley scored just after the break, continuing his fine debut in Ipswich blue, before a Harper penalty gave us control despite the concession.

A few days passed and it was back to Portman Road for the sequel. One match away from the play-off final at Wembley, and with it, the chance to play either Fulham or Middlesbrough for a place in the Premier League.

Seeking to make this count were…

Hladky - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Robson, Shipley - Burns, Harper, Holland - Moller

Just the one switch, as the injury to El Mizouni meant a shuffle. Shipley dropped back into central midfield to partner Robson, whilst Holland came in to take the left-flank role.

Get the trains, buses, private jets, taxis, etc. to Wembley booked. We're going to the play-off final.

Frankly we could, maybe should, have been even more comfortable victors. We battered Hull City in this one, but ultimately settled for just the two goals courtesy of Holland and Harper (the latter of whom scored in the first leg).

So we are in the play-off final and our opposition would be Middlesbrough. Now managed by Vladimir Ivic, a 2-1 aggregate win over Fulham (2-0 home, 0-1 away) meant that it would be the side from the North East that would also be making their way to Wembley for the richest game in world football, and seeking place 20 in the 2023/24 Premier League.

For our date with destiny, the following 11 would start…

Hladky - Lavinier, Darling, Edmundson, Thompson - Robson, El Mizouni - Burns, Harper, Shipley - Moller

A yellow card in the second leg meant Woolfenden was banned, while we also lost Holland to injury, so Darling and a fit-again El Mizouni came in.

So, one match to decide everything. Who's gonna win it?

WE FUCKING DID IT! WE ARE GOING UP! PREMIER LEAGUE HERE WE COME!

Everything all came down in the end to one penalty kick and in the moment we needed it, our goalkeeper Hladky proved why I was so keen to turn down many MLS bids for his services by saving Dael Fry's kick in the shoot-out to win that 6-5, defeat Middlesbrough and confirm our promotion to the Premier League, ending what would be a 21 year absence.

This ended up being another game of attrition, with both Harper and Burns getting injured. Overall, however, we were the better team, but for various reasons, the breakthrough wouldn't come in a tight 90 minutes.

The door looked to have opened up for us when Shipley swept in a glorious free-kick shortly into extra-time. But then Middlesbrough's Fosu scored a fine goal of his own to keep the game tightly poised, and we missed a pretty good chance at the end.

In the end, it went to penalties and a bit of an auspicious start when both sides' first takers missed their kicks. But from the false start, there was accuracy with neither keeper stopping others from going in.

Then, after Harry Darling scored his kick, opposite centre-half Fry stepped up and was denied, and with that, the season was over. Ipswich Town in the Premier League. Ace.

There's no point even pretending that I expected this to happen. I didn't. But it's been a cracking season. I won Manager of the Season for this work, and we can toast the fact we've pulled off the seemingly impossible task. I mean…

I cannot pretend this is a huge overachievement. We were forecast to be in the relegation battle, yet here we are coming in third and holding our nerve in the post-season lottery to take a Premier League place. I'm happy with that.

A look at who got us there…

Must say our new signings did well. Moller established himself as a great striker, Shipley was a pretty remarkable arrival, Holland picked up brilliantly after a slow start, Lavinier ousted Vincent-Young as first choice full-back and when needed Darling stepped up superbly.

So… the big question is how much cash will I have to play with to try and make a Premier League squad out of this lot?

I can work with this.

We may have to get creative but I was dreading getting something like £500k or less. There is cash here to bring in some PL-ready faces and give us a shot at being able to compete.

Tune in next time to see how that rebuild is taking shape.

I've left this for a while.

Between poor WiFi, distractions, getting interested in a crazy FM mod where every player has their contract cancelled and is available as a free agent, and just life, I'd left this thread for a bit. Yesterday, however, was my first day in self-isolation (boo covid's still a thing) so I ended up finishing the entire season.

Seeing as I finished up the season and got carried away, rather than my preferred match-by-match analysis, I think we'll just skip through to the end of the season. We start with our return after the World Cup hiatus, which ironically came the day after England were knocked out by Spain on penalties (Argentina won the tournament, if you see this as an omen for December's real life trip to the desert). It's naturally straight into the Championship, with 7 games in less than a month.

So, how did we fare?

Well we did well to get results imo. Eye-catching ones in particular include a home win over our local rivals Norwich, beating a number of our rivals, and doing well to get some points in at the right moment. The emergence of youngster Ben Morris, who scored a decent number of goals, was also decent. Ending without a win in our last 3 was a bit of a damp squib though.

So, at the end of 46 games, where would we finish up?

Well… considering I would've been OK with finishing 21st in pre-season, we've done a madness to finish 3rd.

We didn't have enough in the end to catch up with our local rivals Norwich City, who at one point we were closing in on but ran out of time to get. Ultimately we drew 4 more games than them, which is what cost us the opportunity to claim second place in our first Championship season.

Neither of us were catching Brighton, who crushed the competition on their way to an instant return with over 100 points (I think that's a higher total than Reading's 2005/06 record), and it's a shame to finish behind our rivals from up the road, but it's crazy to think a squad still heavily reliant on our core squad we inherited at the start of this is now potentially 3 games away from the Premier League.

Hell, looking at the list, Wolves and West Brom are teams with PL budgets that got nowhere near, to say nothing of Coventry, Bristol City and Millwall - all teams that have reached the Prem on some of my FM games but this time fell into League One.

This is an interesting one to call, meanwhile. Fulham were beaten in last season's play-off final, Middlesbrough are decent on their day, and Hull should be taken seriously despite the fact we beat them home and away.

Hull City is our semi-final opponent. The Tigers stole a march on Wigan (who had been promoted with us last season) to book a top six finish, whilst Fulham and Middlesbrough play in what feels like the heavyweight contest. So we'll see if we can take the Yorkshire club first, then turn our attentions to Wembley if we get through.

Exciting stuff.

Contrary to my initial first thought, or maybe I read the dates wrong, no October international break is planned. Possibly as the November internationals will be a bit longer, in the form of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

So we have a burst of games in October before wrapping up with a game on the first weekend of November, for what might be the shortest ever November Manager/Player of the Month competition.

Our first assignment of this pre-WC bundle took us to East Yorkshire, where we looked to move on from the disappointment of losing to Norwich in the Derby by taking on Hull City.

This timesheet contained…

Hladky - Lavinier, Edmundson, Burgess, Vincent-Young - Robson, Shipley - Burns, Harper, Holland - Moller

Can we return to winning ways?

Yes, and this must count as a well-orchestrated triumph.

Particularly glorious was centre-back George Edmundson, who might well have put in the first 10.0 I've had on FM for a performance. Fantastic in defence, and grabbing his first Ipswich Town goals to give us a 2-0 lead. Sensational stuff at both ends, with Moller adding one just after the break.

Hull did have enough chances to make life interesting, but couldn't get a goal back to start any possible comeback. I can be content with this tbf - I wanted a reaction from the poor result at Carrow Road, and I got one.

With that, the next test, and in front of live TV cameras, we had an intriguing match against an underperforming West Bromwich Albion. Now managed by Claudio Ranieri, the Baggies had made a slow start, and with us looking decent so far, I was interested in grabbing another win to add to the highlight reel.

Aiming to stop the Baggies from victory in Suffolk would be this lot…

Hladky - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Vincent-Young - Robson, Shipley - Edwards, Harper, Holland - Moller

Perhaps the noteworthy inclusion is Kyle Edwards, who I considered offloading in the summer but with injuries to Burns and Jackson, and a preference to use Shipley centrally in this one, I went for him as the only real right-wing option.

So anyway, 3 points or not?

A very fine result indeed.

We went at West Brom from the off and would be rewarded with a scarcely expected 3-0 half-time lead. Moller headed in an early cross, Edmundson managed to impressively make it 3 goals from 2 games and Holland tucked in a rebound. West Brom almost didn't know what hit them, such was a brilliant first half display.

No clean sheet, alas, with Callum Morton making it 3-1, but we controlled the Baggies in their attempts to get back into the contest. So I can tolerate it this time.

We could be forgiven for allowing ourselves a little joy in this result continuing an excellent start to the season. But we must move on.

Barnsley would be next on our fixture list, with the Tykes making the trip from South Yorkshire down to our neck of the woods.

Fitness concerns meant a reshuffle. Namely to this configuration:

Hladky - Vincent-Young, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Morsy, Harper - Holland, Chaplin, Shipley - Moller

Would we manage to make a mockery of the idea a rotation slows us down and get the job done?

Satisfactory job.

Barnsley struggled to do a lot in this one and although we started slowly, we well and truly seized control with Holland and Moller scoring in first half added time to truly take the game in our favour.

Substitute Edwards made it 3-0, and in truth we could well have given ourselves a bigger winner margin in the end. As it was, three was the magic number, to use the old cliche.

With the job done to satisfaction, we now had Millwall away. The old trope of being a difficult place to go could be wheeled out, although this is a Millwall team in a relegation battle.

The pack selected would be…

Hladky - Lavinier, Edmundson, Woolfenden, Thompson - Robson, Shipley - Holland, Harper, Edwards - Moller

Would we grab ourselves 3 points from the visit to this particular bit of London?

That's the Lions tamed effectively enough.

The in-form Shipley gave us the lead and after a fairly low quality remainder of the half, we doubled the lead through a nice goal by Holland in a slightly unconventional right-wing role for this one.

From there we really should've had another 3 goal haul to add to our collection. This time however that third goal just wouldn't appear.

But hey, I'm liking our win ability. This was our 4th straight win since losing to Norwich and it is genuinely putting us on track to be a promotion contender again, something I wasn't really planning on being for this season.

No point getting cocky though. We're a newly promoted side and first of all I am legit content just to stay up. Maybe we should be seeking to push on and take the opportunity to push for the Premier League in case it doesn't come around again.

Stoke City away would be next up, as we took on a team that had a good decade-long run in the PL but have since flattered to deceive in attempts to return.

Making my starting line-up this time would be…

Hladky - Lavinier, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Robson, El Mizouni - Edwards, Harper, Shipley - Moller

We beat Stoke in the FA Cup last season so would we be able to inflict more misery on the team from the Potteries?

Hmmm… well clearly we decided to fail in style. I do wonder if this ultimately was a game too far for some of our squad.

Wilmot put Stoke in front and although we did force Joe Bursik into a couple of decent stops, Stoke generally played better and controlled our myriad attacking threats.

One time transfer target Scott Twine scored a chip to make it 2-0 and then Tyrese Campbell added another less than 10 minutes later, at which point we just accepted it was over and focused on not conceding a fourth.

A rare misfire then in our final away match before the great World Cup-induced hiatus to proceedings. Which wasn't really the happiest way or indeed the way I was hoping to do that with games running out for one final pre-World Cup huzzah.

Maybe that would come in the outright final game before the pause, as we welcomed Birmingham City to Portman Road.

For this one, I decided the best reaction to our poor result at Stoke was a few switches around. Making the grade would be this lot…

Hladky - Vincent-Young, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Thompson - Morsy, Harper - Jackson, Chaplin, Holland - Pigott

Injury and suspension did necessitate a few other tweaks than planned, though the rare start for Pigott over Moller does count as slightly unusual.

Can we wave goodbye for a month with a win?

Excellent dose of late drama in our favour.

We in truth were the weaker team in this one. Birmingham seemed to take advantage by shading the first half, but a Blues team now managed by a post-Man United Ole fell behind to a fine header by Pigott on his first team recall.

But Birmingham continued to look good and likelier to do stuff, and would make it 2-0 when Dan Potts headed in with 20 to go.

Yet oddly, Birmingham didn't do a lot late on whereas we threw on both Moller and rare substitute Tyreece Simpson, and that did the trick, as Arsenal loanee Moller found us an injury time winner.

With the World Cup pause now upon us, we have a month long break before our next commitment, in the form of a friendly against local non-league side Felixstowe, followed by a trip to Luton on December 10th in the resumption of league hostilities. This is actually before Qatar 22 will even be up, but I suspect that most 2nd tier-based players will be out of the tournament by then.

Anyway, a table…

Tell ya what - we were predicted for a relegation battle, while I would have been OK with a midtable spot like play-off winners Wigan are occupying. But 11 wins out of our 18 pre-World Cup fixtures and being sat in the top 6, even above Wolves, is a great start. So yeah, I'm very pleased with how it's gone so far.

We now have a month to ourselves to reboot this thing, then see what we can do as we get plunged right into the Christmas schedule with all its traditional excess.