Ipswich Town hosts Preston North End at Portman Road on a Saturday afternoon—a proper 3 pm kick-off, where everyone drifts in carrying their own little expectations.
You can almost picture it: the usual shuffle down Portman Road, people grumbling about the cold, someone muttering, “We should win this,” even if they don’t fully believe it.
Preston will be arriving with something to prove, while Ipswich will be focused on keeping their promotion push ticking along. Nothing flashy, nothing spectacular but these are the games that matter far more than people admit.
McKenna stays steady. Even when Ipswich wobble, he doesn’t. The team plays the same way, tries to control the game, trusts the patterns. At home, you can usually see what he’s aiming for within five minutes.
Heckingbottom’s situation is a bit more chaotic. Suspensions, injuries, poor results. It’s the kind of stretch that can make a manager look older overnight. He’s trying to get Preston believing again, halt the slide, but coming to Portman Road is hardly the easiest place to find your footing.
This fixture has a habit of doing its own thing. Goals, swings, the occasional drubbing. It’s rarely dull:
Preston have had the better of it overall, especially up there, but Ipswich showed in 2023 they can tear them open when they get the tempo right.
Ipswich will stick with their usual 4‑2‑3‑1, because why wouldn’t they? Matusiwa and Taylor are doing the graft, the three behind Azon buzz around looking for gaps, and the full-backs push on whenever they can. It’s predictable in the best way—you know what’s coming, but stopping it is another matter.
Preston’s 3‑5‑2 feels more like a necessity than a choice right now. With suspensions and injuries everywhere, they’ll pack the middle, slow the game down, and hope their wing-backs don’t get pinned back for 90 minutes. It’s not pretty, but they’re not in a position to worry about aesthetics
Ipswich are exactly where they want to be. Preston, meanwhile, is hovering around the top half but they can feel themselves slipping.
Four wins from five, mostly comfortable. The defeat to Sheffield United, though, was more than alarming.
They started the month like they meant business, then fell apart. Three defeats, eight goals conceded in the last two games, and confidence is hanging by a thread.
Ipswich Town
C.Walton; Furlong, O’Shea, Kipré, Davis; Matusiwa, Taylor; Walle Egeli, Mehmeti, Clarke; Hirst.
Injuries: Townsend (ACL), Philogene (knee), Akpom (groin), Núñez (knock), Young (muscle).
Preston North End
J.Walton; Offiah, Lindsey, Gibson; Valentin; McCann, Whiteman, Devine; Lewis; Dobbin, Jebbison.
Injuries/Suspensions: Osmajic (suspended), Storey (suspended), Hughes (hamstring), Potts (knee), Iversen (groin), Brady (calf).
Ipswich look the more settled side by a mile. Preston are conceding too easily, missing key players, and trying to hold things together with little more than tape and hope. Heckingbottom’s 3‑5‑2 might slow the game down, but it’s hard to see them keeping Ipswich quiet unless Town have one of those rare, perfect days.
Prediction: Ipswich Town 2–0 Preston North End
A steady, grown‑up home win. Not one for the scrapbook, but the kind you look back on in April and think, “Yeah, that helped.”
