On a bright and pleasant Saturday morning, it felt good to have competitive football back on the agenda. It’s been a typical off-season since the World Cup ended, characterised by the usual paroxysms online over the lack of signings, debates over the relevance of pre-season friendlies and, recently, a bizarre edition of Top Trumps over who commits more human rights violations out of Ghana and Saudi Arabia, so the return of actual football was timely and welcome.
Ipswich away wasn’t the worst start
we could’ve been granted on paper, but anyone with a few Premier League campaigns under their belt knows facing a newly promoted team away is a Looney Tunes-level banana skin. The Tractor Boys have certainly flexed their Ed Sheeran-backed financial muscles, mirroring our record-breaking summer of 2026 to spend more than any promoted team in history. This time, they’ve largely copied our approach in looking for gems abroad rather than signing the Second Tier Podcast’s All-Star XI, which is definitely the wiser option, but time will tell if they’ll enjoy the same success we did long term.
An unfortunate technical problem with my digital ticket meant I’d had to spend an hour and a half on hold to Ipswich’s ticket office, which was made even worse by the hold music of choice being Ed Sheeran, so perhaps the omens for this trip were already looking bleak.
At least it was a simple hour-long jaunt on the Greater Anglia service from Stratford, thankfully avoiding the hordes of West Ham fans heading the other way, and we reflected on how nice it was for early morning cans on a train to be vaguely socially acceptable again. The travelling fans from the North East certainly seemed to have been making the most of this privilege, and we heard the usual boisterous cries as soon as we pulled into Ipswich Station.
We decided to forego the usual easy option of the Station Hotel and instead headed towards the Marina to join a few comrades at Isaac’s on the Quay. This was a trendy gaff that somehow managed to feel traditional and modern, even having TVs installed in the urinals so you wouldn’t have to miss a second of Man United losing to Hull when answering nature’s call.
The home fans were friendly enough, though they do seem to have a loose affinity with the Mags, which would explain their slightly cheeky chants of “There’s only one Bobby Robson!”. Most Sunderland fans liked and respected Bobby Robson anyway, so it was hardly the cutting barb they thought it would be, but it was their first day back in the Premier League, so we let them have their fun.
Taking our usual spot in the Cobbold Stand Upper, the ground was as lively as you’d expect as we took to the field in our striking and completely unneeded pink change kit. I admit it’s a “ya da/game’s gone/utter woke nonsense” opinion of mine, but swapping into change colours when there’s not even the vaguest clash of colours has always disproportionately irked me, especially when this season’s home kit is such a thing of beauty.
For me, it dilutes our sense of identity when we aren’t wearing red and white, and I miss the days when we’d swap out only when it was genuinely needed, though I suppose that wouldn’t help bring in the all-important cash from Elvis fans at Graceland.
Sadly, our choice of outfit for the day was far from our only problem. We started the game respectably enough, carving out a decent one-on-one opportunity for Brobbey, which Ipswich’s defender did well to block.
Sadly, it was mostly downhill from there, and their new signing Enciso tore through our defence with frankly humiliating ease to lay it on a plate for Emersonn to put Ipswich ahead. Angulo’s free-kick to restore parity was a stunner and, after a cagey second half, it seemed like we’d done enough to earn a point, before the most “typical Sunderland” end to the game saw Clarke ruthlessly punish another defensive error to send us home empty-handed.
Losing to a last-minute goal is bad enough, but one from a former player always stings that little harder, and the home fans took plenty of delight in reminding us of that fact as we trudged back to the station.
It’s important to remember, though, that one swallow does not make a summer, even after spending hundreds of millions of pounds. I vividly remember the boasting Burnley fans mocking us on our way out of Turf Moor last August, and we all know how things turned out for each club from there.
In the context of some other scorelines this weekend, our performance was hardly the worst disaster from the first round of fixtures, though you sense that we need an immediate response at home to Fulham next week to nip any creeping anxiety about the season in the bud.
