On 7 April 2021, Ipswich Town announced that US investment group Gamechanger 20 Limited had purchased a majority stake in the club. The consortium was made up of the local investment group ORG Portfolio Management (well, 3780 miles isn’t THAT far), the “Three Lions Fund” (made up of three Phoenix Rising board members.)
So now we have to look at Phoenix Rising. They are an “soccer” team that plays in, well, Phoenix actually, which was founded in 2014 originally being known as the Arizona United Soccer Club, which played in the second division of American football, sorry, “soccer”. Reports suggest that Phoenix has “enjoyed moderate success;” make of that what you will. Their chair is Mike O’Leary who was CEO of that notoriously successful club West Bromwich Wobbleyou. (Sorry may have got lost in the Ws there).
Not for the first time a new super CEO knowing everything about everything and then some brought in his own manager and he was a disaster, so the manager was kicked out rather than the man who appointed him. (They never learn). Then Ipswich appointed Kieran McKenna who was an ManU you might recall, and he took them through back to back promotions, in his second and third seasons including an undefeated run of 18 league games.
So with winning their final league game of the 2023/4 season, Ipswich got back-to-back promotions being runners up in the league – only to find the Premier League was a different kettle of whatnots and thus they got relegated again in 2025.
Now there is so much toing and froing here that I might have got some of that wrong, but believe me they have gone up and down quite a few times, but came back to life once more after winning the 2025/6 campaign in their last match. And then their manager left and was replaced by Gary O’Neil from Strasbourg.
As the table shows, Ipswich have secured a mid-table position after four games…
| club | P | w | d | l | f | a | gd | pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 1 | +7 | 12 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 2 | +6 | 12 |
| 3 | Hull City | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 2 | +3 | 8 |
| 4 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 13 | 5 | +8 | 7 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 9 | +1 | 7 |
| 6 | Brentford | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 4 | +3 | 6 |
| 7 | Liverpool | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 4 | +2 | 6 |
| 8 | Everton | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 3 | +2 | 6 |
| 9 | Ipswich Town | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 10 | -3 | 6 |
… and they have a propensity for mid-tableism.
Ipswich Town forward Zian Flemming, did an intereview recently in which he said, “We want to be on the biggest stage – and this [Arsenal] is the biggest team that you could face at the moment. Under the lights at home, I’m expecting all of the fans to be buzzing and all of us players to give it a right go.”
Yes we know what a “right go” means – we have seen it many times before from lower league clubs.
What we might hope for is for Arsenal to knock in a few more goals early on and thus not only improve still further on their goal difference, but also on the distance between Arsenal and whatever bag of money is behind them. Or come to that team having a “right go”.
Meanwhile we are getting ever clearer indications that clubs that are owed money byu Manchester City are demanding that the Premier League should drop their case against the ManCs so that the Mancs start paying out the money they owe other clubs.
So desperate is the situation getting however that some clubs from outside the Premier League are now talking about taking ManC to court over unpaid bills. That however won’t help any Premier League clubs that are owed money by the United Arab Emirates club as it appears (although I can’t confirm it) that ManC are saying that they won’t pay until penny to any English club until all charges are dropped…
Next up, the team… on the basis that it is not all money and we do still play football sometimes.
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