Ipswich Town Women host fellow strugglers Crystal Palace at the JobServe Community Stadium in Colchester on Sunday afternoon (KO 2pm, live on YouTube) looking to bounce back from last week’s 7-0 drubbing at Bristol City, which manager Joe Sheehan admits was the lowest point of the season.
The Blues remain bottom of the table having won only once in WSL2 in 2025/26 with Sunday’s loss their biggest of the campaign.
"No doubt, our lowest point of the season to date,” Sheehan told TownTV. "A feeling that we don’t wish to have again, but lots of learnings and lots of really good, honest conversations and an opportunity for us to put it right.
"A really tough day for us but we’ve got a group full of really honest, good characters, good people and ones that are prepared to fight and embrace the challenge head-on, starting this weekend.”
The Town manager says the squad has come through the week’s training with no issues.
"Pretty good, all fine,” he continued. "We always try to be really consistent with what we do, following really good processes win, lose or draw and doubling down on the bits that we absolutely need to improve on.
"The group are really honest, they’re a great group to work with and responded really well and are raring to go again.”
The Blues played Palace away in the Subway League Cup last month and fell to a 3-2 defeat, the Eagles netting the winning goal with seven minutes remaining.
They currently sit 11th in the table, one place and three points ahead of Town, also having won once in the league this season.
"A team that are also going to be ready to fight,” Sheehan said of Sunday’s opponents. "We had a really good, entertaining cup game against them not so long ago, a game we narrowly lost but plenty of positives from that.
"It was a really good encounter, a thrilling game and we know they’re a team who are going to come here and be ready to compete, perform and we’re excited to embrace that challenge, tackle it head-on and try and come out with a positive result.”
Reflecting further on last month’s match, he added: "I think we can take confidence knowing that we can cause them some problems. There were bits we did quite well that we’ll look to carry through and try and execute again.
"But there are also things that we’ve learned, not just from that game but the weekend just gone and other experiences from the season that we want to improve on.
"There’s no hiding, there’s no shying away from it. We’re not content with where we are, we want to make more progress, we want to perform better and we have another opportunity to do so this weekend.”