Ipswich Town will welcome Sheffield Wednesday to Portman Road on Saturday for a game with major implications at both ends of the Championship table.
A loss to Cardiff City last weekend left the hosts third, one point behind Leeds United in the race for automatic promotion, while their visitors are a single point adrift of safety despite a loss of their own last Friday.
Ipswich Town return to Portman Road on Saturday with the aim of rebounding from a setback last weekend in their bid for back-to-back promotions under the management of Kieran McKenna.
On their return to England’s second tier, the Tractor Boys have enjoyed a memorable campaign thus far, remaining frontrunners in the top-two fight having earned 78 points from their opening 37 games, winning 23 of those while only suffering five defeats – the fewest in the division.
After enduring a dip between mid-December and mid-February, winning just once in a nine-match span, McKenna’s men moved back into pole position with a run of six straight three-point hauls, culminating in a dramatic 3-2 home triumph over Bristol City in which they came from 2-1 down in the final 10 minutes thanks to goals from Conor Chaplin and Leif Davis.
Having then fallen behind Leeds United, who prevailed over Sheffield Wednesday last Friday, ahead of a trip to Cardiff City at the weekend, the Suffolk outfit set out to make it seven triumphs on the bounce and looked set to prevail as Moore opened the scoring in the 79th minute, but Ryan Wintle netted a leveller deep into injury time before Callum O’Dowda snatched all three points for the Welsh outfit in the 10th added minute.
Now a point outside the top two with nine games to play, Ipswich Town will know they cannot afford another slump and will be desperate to keep pace with in-form Leeds and bounce back to winning ways at Portman Road on Saturday.
In their way stand a Sheffield Wednesday side who also earned promotion from League One last term and are setting out to preserve their second-tier status this time around.
After enduring a dismal start to the campaign, the South Yorkshire outfit have given themselves a fighting chance in recent months under the management of Danny Rohl, taking their tally to 38 points from 37 games with 10 wins from their last 19 attempts since the beginning of December.
Following a tough run early in the new year, the Owls were able to move back within touching distance of safety with their strongest run of the season, putting four straight league victories together as they firstly beat Millwall and Bristol City before picking up 1-0 victories over fellow strugglers Rotherham United and Plymouth Argyle, with Ike Ugbo and Djeidi Gassama netting the decisive goals respectively.
Setting out to make it five wins on the bounce and finally leap out of the drop zone, Rohl’s men most recently welcomed promotion-chasing Leeds United to Hillsborough in a Yorkshire Derby on Friday, but they were unable to bolster their survival bid, eventually falling to a 2-0 defeat as Patrick Bamford opened the scoring on the stroke of half time before Willy Gnonto doubled the visitors’ lead on the hour mark.
While they cannot be too disheartened by that loss to a strong promotion-chasing Whites team, Sheffield Wednesday now sit a point adrift of safety ahead of a tough trip to another high-flying side, and they will be keen to bounce back at the weekend and take a major scalp with their sights set on Huddersfield Town, Birmingham City and Queens Park Rangers.
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