A message to Ipswich fans: Enjoy promotion drama – but get ready to be obliterated

The Coventry Building Society Arena is plonked on the outskirts of its city and enveloped by a large Tesco, an industrial park and an A-road. It is not a promising location for football romance, yet after Tuesday night there is some corner of this unlovely stadium that is for ever Ipswich.

Their 2-1 win put them within a point of the Premier League, which they are likely to secure on Saturday at home to Huddersfield. This would be back-to-back promotions under Kieran McKenna, the sort of thing which used to only happen to financially doped teams or in the daydreams of naive owners sold a lie about Reading’s lucrative catchment area and high-speed rail links to Paddington.

It is a remarkable achievement and a remarkable feeling for their supporters, ecstatic whiplash. You rarely realise you are living through the best times in your life as they are happening, you do when watching your team go up after years in the doldrums. This is an evocative time of year if you have ever experienced anything similar, lengthening evenings stirring memories of tense matches and life plans uprooted to get to Barnsley on a school night.

Look at those fans packed into the corner at Coventry at the final whistle, they are bouncing, cuddling, falling over one another. Yet no amount of videos with the words “limbs” in the caption can capture the glee in that away end. What awaits on the other side? Unfortunately, nothing that will touch this.

The Premier League is football’s Pyramid stage, the land of milk and money. Promotion is a time to put away childish things, like annual trips to Deepdale. The reality is not quite as advertised. You will be obliterated, probably half a dozen times. Minor mistakes will be punished by brutally excellent players you have previously only seen on television or EAFC. You must tolerate the incursion of a number of other depressing initials into your life: P&S, VAR, PGMOL, WaJoTS (White and Jordan on talkSPORT).

We must beware recency bias, which suggests every promoted team’s miserable destiny is the current Sheffield United season. They are down, one of Burnley or Luton will follow, possibly both. This would be all three promoted sides relegated, and will bring concerted hand-wringing about the growing gap between the top two divisions.

Treat that with scepticism, because three up then down has only happened once before, in 1997/98. In the past 10 years only 13 of the 30 promoted teams have gone straight back down, the average finishing position in the Premier League after promotion is between 15th and 16th. Glorious, lucrative safety.

More pertinent is the change in experience from watching a team on the up to one which dreams of treading water. The last 30 promoted teams won more than every other Championship game. Once in the top flight you are looking at more like one win in four. Promoted teams score on average 76.6 goals per season, 34.6 more than they concede. In the Premier League it is 37.6 scored, less than a goal a game, and a goal difference of -24.6. Glory turns grim at speed.

Say you are the rare club which establishes itself, then what? Brighton have tasted Europe now, what if their 2024 form continues and they’re fighting relegation next season? Wolves are bobbing along happily under Gary O’Neil mostly winning and losing the games you would expect them to. Will that make them jaded? Ask Crystal Palace, in the midst of their longest top flight spell and trending upwards under Oliver Glasner, but their fans were unfurling protest banners as recently as March. They were 14th.

‘Just happy to be here’ becomes entitlement after 18 decent months and ennui comes quickly once success plateaus. One poor transfer window can undo years of progress and before you know it you are going back to Preston again.

So enjoy this weekend, Ipswich fans. Because despite the forthcoming joy, excitement and money, there is a high chance it will never get any better.