BRUM IS BLUE!

Today’s the day! Proper football returns and Blues face Ipswich under the lights at St Andrews @ Knighthead Park in Wagner and Brady’s round two of the Championship. Hopefully this time we won’t see managers sacked while sitting in play off positions or managerial failures brought in for their football name. Instead I hope tonight is going to be a real statement; “We’re back!”

The opening game is always a tough one to call, it’s early doors and we know that pre-season results aren’t usually the most useful of yard sticks. With Ipswich being recently relegated from the Premier League and Blues promoted from League One there is almost that anticipation that there will be a bit of a void between the two teams but I’m not convinced.

Ipswich have won all four of their pre-season fixtures, this matches their total competitive wins for the 2024/25 campaign which saw them relegated from the Premier League with just 22 points, so it’s likely to offer the players some hope they can do better this season. They’re favourites to win the league, they’ve brought in four new players although manager Kieran McKenna has spoken about wanting better squad depth and they’ve also given Ed Sheeran the number 17. Now we have to be concerned!

For many Blues fans it will be the chance to see our new signings in the flesh. I think we’ll see a line up very similar to the last pre-season friendly we had against Forest. It’s a strong starting line up and bench so it gives me some faith as well that we’ll be able to adapt well if things don’t quite go to plan.

Head to Head

So the two teams meet tonight for the 86th time with Blues lacking slightly behind the Tractor Boys in terms of victories having beat us 36 times to our 30 victories, 19 finished out in a draw. It’s evenly matched in the last eight meet ups with Blues winning one and Ipswich winning one, the remaining three saw the teams share the spoils.

Predictions

I’m going in optimistic, that’s definitely a bad omen, I can’t help it though. I think Blues have the momentum in this one as we’ve just smashed League One and will want to prove that it wasn’t just the quality of the other teams but the quality of ours that allowed us to do this. Ipswich have been banging them in in Pre-Season but I think they’ll find the real thing a tad more difficult.

My heart says we’ll win so I’m going to go all in and put it out there. I’m going to say 2-1 Blues!