When Town take to the field against Liverpool on August 17th, it will of course mark an historic return and an extraordinary change in fortunes. Whilst we all recognise this, how we view it will likely vary greatly between two broad generation groups.

First Timers will be seeing a Premier League ITFC in an entirely new light. After more than 20 years of treading water in the Championship and then the catastrophe of relegation to League One, for them this day must have seemed beyond their wildest dreams - from Cheltenham to Chelsea.

No more games at a half-empty Portman Road with journeymen players grinding out turgid performances ignored (sometimes mercifully) by the national media. They no doubt never imagined we’d one day be sharing a pitch with some of the biggest names in European football.

Old(er) Timers will be seeing a return to the days when we regularly did exactly that. The thrill will be no less but the context quite different. It’s one thing to think back to the early noughties and the Wembley play-off final/first Premier League season where we surprised everyone.

It’s quite something else to go back further to the 70s and early 80s . Back then we were of course consistently one of the best teams in Britain and often in Europe – between 1972 and 1982 we only once finished outside the top six of English football (and that was in 1978 when the FA Cup more than compensated for it).

For those of us who were there (I was), the resumption of matches against the likes of Arsenal, Villa and Man U will be reminders of Sir Bobby’s glory days, a return to equal billing.

The returning ITFC of 2024 however is in many ways a different club. The off-field austerity of the Marcus Evans years has been cast aside; the on-field attrition based approach of McCarthy/Lambert has been similarly jettisoned in favour of the modern swashbuckling precision of McKennaball.

These changes are necessary, of course, because the 2024 Premier League is a different game to the one that we were last in (which, we should remember, was its inaugural year) and unrecognisable from the Division One equivalent of the 70s/80s glory days.

It’s more strategic and analytical (two words frequently used to describe McKenna from the moment he walked in the building). It’s more squad-based (the five subs in effect enable managers to change the whole shape of a team; it’s notable that, according to Opta, some of the most progressive managers such as Roberto De Zerbi at Brighton and Marco Silva at Fulham made the most of this last season). Then of course there’s VAR.

On top of all this is the intense ‘win at all costs’ pressure created by the sheer otherness of the Premier League – risk everything to get there and gamble everything to stay.

Unrelenting media attention also underlines how the Premier League is simply apart from the rest of the game. EFL Highlights on terrestrial have been handed from one niche provider to another and aired at irregular (sometimes apparently random) times often in the middle of the night whereas now we will be an integral part of Match of the Day and the full range of wall-to-wall Sky coverage (for which we had a small taste last season).

Outside of the matches themselves is the rumour/innuendo mill which we have already sampled via the McKenna ‘will he stay or will he go’ saga. Everyone from the lamest clickbait factories to Sky/BBC told us daily that he would definitely not be signing a new contract with us and where he was about to go. Both were thankfully completely wrong.

We Older(er) Timers often yearn for the days when news equalled facts but today’s 24/7 media machine has a voracious appetite that demands to be sated so we’d best accept it and maybe enjoy the attention - as First Timers undoubtedly do.

Social media in particular now allows for the spread of both content and comment in a way that didn’t exist when we were last at the top table (in the early noughties it was in its relative infancy and back in the 70s and 80s it would have seemed like sci-fi!).

Today, of course, not only do the media companies flood social platforms with stories but comments on those stories come at us from all angles too, so we’ll never be in any doubt what other fans think of us.

The recent Jaden Philogene soap opera was an illustration. When it looked like the player had a choice of Everton or us, the boards were full of Everton fans’ incredulity that he might choose us, a club that they dismissed as ‘next season’s Luton’ (never mind that, for most football fans, Luton’s story was an admirable one).

It was tempting to point out that choosing Town would be to favour a club that may struggle in the Prem versus one that regularly has; a club well run from training ground to boardroom versus one that’s a basket case from top to bottom.

No one will be shocked that we’re seen by many as one of the season’s likely whipping boys but it is a bit of a surprise to see who considers themselves our superiors.

There’s been much talk of us being ‘back where we belong’ but I’m guessing that First Timers will struggle with that. As an Older(er) Timer I do too actually. We were in League One because we weren’t good enough for the Championship; we were then promoted from the Championship because we were too good for it.

Only time will tell if we’re good enough for the Prem. As big as these last two leaps were, no one’s in any doubt that the next one is way bigger (whatever happens, after coming out second best just 10 times in the last 92 league games we’ll certainly be reacquainted with that losing feeling). McKenna summed up the challenge best - as he usually does - when he told Sky that this season will be about “building on the foundations that we've laid over the last two years and then going up a level in every department”.

Those foundations are as much about how the club does things as what it does. The rejuvenation and expansion of community initiatives reflects this as do the actions and approach of McKenna, Mark Ashton and Gamechanger. It has echoes of David Sheepshanks and the Cobbolds; it has none whatsoever of Evans.

Some cynics (undoubtedly non-Town fans) posted that McKenna’s rejection of overtures from ‘big clubs’ will come back to haunt him when he’s sacked by Christmas as we languish at the bottom of the league – they don’t know our club.

It’s somehow fitting that we kick off the new season against Liverpool. They were the only club that consistently shared those top-six finishes in the 1972-82 Robson period. They’ve continued on that trajectory of course whilst we certainly haven’t (we can except the media to remind us that the last two Premier League games with Liverpool ended 0-11 on aggregate).

Right now though, the two clubs are sharing a pitch because both have earned the right to play at the top. As an Old(er) Timer I well recall when we did it before so this time round I’ll be respectful of the opposition – but not awestruck.

Whatever our individual perspective, we’ll all be celebrating the fact that, actually, these are the days.

ChrisFelix added 20:33 - Jul 25 Fantastic blog. As someone who has followed Town for 60 years I feel what has happened at PR a miracle On par with what Ramsey did between 55 & 62 plus the progress of Town under Robson a decade later. Ipswich have never been the media "darling" & in recent seasons we have had to play 2nd fiddle to our nearest rivals. This Town miracle is new to all of us, but we deserve our place at the top table. A year ago I sat in a bar on a cruise watching a premier league game. I talked to a chap a life long Man U fan living outside Plymouth He had never heard of Keiran Mckenna. Well I reckon he has now

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heavyweight added 20:42 - Jul 25 When I started university in 1980, I met lots of supporters from other teams, one said to me rather enviously "it must be great being an Ipswich supporter" - nobody has said that to me in the intervening 44 years - I'm hoping they might be thinking it again now.
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flykickingbybgunn added 06:53 - Jul 26 I remember watching Town v Liverpool in 1982 and thinking at this match there were two thirds of the silverware of Europe on display. We of course had the UEFA Cup and they were the European Cup holders.
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ElephantintheRoom added 11:47 - Jul 28 Enjoyable read - but you’ve conveniently overlooked the fact that both our last visits have been something of a struggle, lasting 3 years and two years. Some might spot the geometric progression going on there. And whilst most eulogise Marcus Stewart’s winner at Anfield - Adam Tanner achieved the same with a pretty good goal as well. I’d add that Burley’s team, having been held back several years for one reason or another surprised more than a few people, including the supporters and manager - and their success was quickly undone by shedloads of signings …. This years version haven’t had the luxury of showing what they can do. The current success is built on foundations of sand - there’s no young players coming through and everyone else has the same software to uncover hidden gems - which to my eye are getting ever more obvious and somewhat pricy gems, some of which don’t have much lustre I think it’s wise to be a bit wary - 17th will do and FFP might even doom three teams this year. McKenna was consistently outfoxed by managers at the top end of the championship last season - Town may not be this season’s Luton - but the runes suggest they could be this season’s Burnley.

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Carberry added 08:27 - Aug 9 A super read. My overriding emotion over the last few years is feeling sorry for those younger supporters who have experienced nothing but disappointment. At last they have something to feel good about and although they may never see the silverware on our mantlepiece again let's hope it's a joyous ride.
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