THIS SEASON’S RELEGATION battle bears an eerie comparison to last year’s.

All three of the promoted sides went straight back down last season, and this year’s trio of new arrivals currently occupy the drop zone. Southampton, like Sheffield United last season, look doomed; another ill-equipped squad going down with a wretched points total.

Seven-straight defeats and sour murmurs regarding transfer strategy mean Leicester look set to follow Burnley as an established Premier League name unable to gain a footing upon their return to the elite.

Ipswich Town are therefore the Luton Town of this enterprise: the long-absent underdogs playing in a throw-back stadium who end up with the best chance of staying up.

Ipswich may yet break the comparison: where Luton fell short last year, Kieran McKenna and his players might yet succeed.

Ahead of today’s trip to Anfield, Ipswich are 18th, but level on points with 17th-placed Wolves, who today face Arsenal.

Everton are four points ahead and so are barely within touching distance in 16th place. Wolves are Ipswich’s primary target, and so they will be giddy with rumours Matheus Cunha might leave for Arsenal before the end of the transfer window.

Ipswich’s aggression in the transfer market should aid their survival hopes: Having already added Jaden Philogene and Ben Godfrey, they this week completed the loan signing of the highly rated  Julio Enciso from Brighton, whose 2023 winner against Man City was nominated for the Puskas Award. (Enciso’s arrival is hardly great news for Ireland’s Sammie Szmodics, who is currently sidelined with injury.)

Only Brighton have had a higher net spend in the Premier League since Ipswich since last summer: in fact, Ipswich’s net spend is currently more than Southampton and Leicester’s added together.

So while the club have given Kieran McKenna a greater chance to succeed, it is McKenna who gives the club its greatest chance of success.

McKenna’s rise is truly astonishing: a first-team coach at Manchester United under Jose Mourinho at only 31, and a Premier League manager with back-to-back promotions on his CV by the age of 37. McKenna can also claim one of the greatest character references in the modern game, given he has been anonymously dismissed as “school-masterly” by sources within the United dressing room. Anyone who didn’t fit into United’s rancid culture should be a good fit elsewhere.

McKenna does not suffer from dogma which appears to have condemned his fellow promoted teams. Leicester, you could argue, were unlucky to lose Enzo Maresca to Chelsea, especially given McKenna was himself linked with the job. Their error, however, was to replace Maresca with Steve Cooper, whose playing style was antithetical and unsuited to those at his disposal. Ruud Van Nistelrooy is now labouring to sift the wreckage.

Southampton, meanwhile, were doomed from the moment Russell Martin demanded his players play the same way as they did in the Championship, despite the slight complication of coming up against vastly better players. Martin preferred to bemoan his crowd’s anxiety at his side’s kamikaze passing rather than analyse the root of that anxiety.

McKenna, though, is flexible and pragmatic in a way that’s increasingly rewarded in the Premier League.

“We have a brave identity of play that we want to stay true to, but we know it’s a huge step up, so we need to be clever how we compete for points”, said McKenna during the course of this season.

An interesting piece by FourFourTwo prior to season’s start accentuated the fact that McKenna is not wedded to any specific passing style, pointing to figures which showed Ipswich ranked mid-table in the Championship last year for short, long, and medium-length passes. McKenna’s Ipswich, in other words, were a little bit of everything, and to great effect.

Arijanet Muric, for instance, was signed from Burnley in the summer to be the number one goalkeeper, with his primary skillset being his comfort with the ball at his feet. He is regrettably error-prone with his hands, however, and McKenna has dropped him in favour of the more stolid – and solid – Christian Walton.

In earning promotion from League One, McKenna played a back three, but switched to a 4-2-3-1 in the Championship. This season he has broadly stuck with that back four, though has occasionally flipped to a back three.

This has sometimes worked (a creditable 2-2 draw away to Fulham; a narrow 1-0 loss away to Arsenal) and sometimes, er, has not. (See last week’s 6-0 hammering at home to Man City.)

If Ipswich are to stay up, they need to add more goals to an attack carried on Liam Delap’s broad shoulders. They have scored only 20 goals in the league so far – the third-lowest in the division – and Delap is responsible for eight of them. Perhaps Enciso and Philogene are the right recruits to address that issue.

Today’s game at Liverpool is their most difficult remaining fixture, and after today only six of their remaining 15 opponents are in the top half. Southampton and Wolves are winnable must-wins at home, while their final away games are at Everton and Leicester.

And if Kieran McKenna keeps Ipswich in the Premier League, the club’s greater battle begins – keeping Kieran McKenna.