Perhaps the most well-known accomplishment of Ipswich Town in the modern era is their incredible achievement of earning consecutive promotions to guarantee their place in the Premier League.
But before their spectacular exploits under Kieran McKenna’s leadership, the Tractor Boys were true Championship mainstays, and in 2019 they were relegated to League One.
One of the Tractor Boys’ most famous second-tier seasons occurred in 2014–15, before McKenna joined the team.
Under the leadership of former manager Mick McCarthy, the Suffolk team secured a play-off position.
Defenders Luke Chambers and Christophe Berra were the Tractor Boys’ joint-highest paid players ten seasons ago, based on Capology estimations.
Both players contributed equally to the success of the 2014–15 season, earning an estimated £10,000 each week, or £520,000 annually.
Despite giving up 54 goals and finishing with a goal differential of +18 from the 72 goals they scored, the Tractor Boys had a comparatively strong defense in the Championship that season. Goal differential ultimately proved to be a crucial component, as McCarthy’s team finished tied with Wolverhampton Wanderers in seventh place on the points.
Chambers and Berra, two former Tractor Boys defenders who are 39 and 40 years old, respectively, have also hung up their boots.
After initially joining Ipswich from Nottingham Forest in the summer of 2012, Chambers will always be known as a veteran who played for the team for an incredible nine seasons.
After joining Colchester United before the 2021–2022 season, he played for the League Two team for two seasons before declaring his retirement in August 2023 at the age of 37.
Chambers will be most remembered for his time with the Tractor Boys, when he made an amazing 396 appearances over an unprecedented nine-season spell, even though he also played for teams like Northampton Town, Forest, and Colchester.
In appreciation of his accomplishments while playing in the Championship, League One, and League Two, Chambers received the Sir Tom Finney Award at the 2024 EFL Awards.
After playing for Hearts and Raith Rovers in his home country of Scotland, Berra, who played for the Tractor Boys for four seasons from 2013–14–2016–17, retired from competition in 2022.
The former center-half joined Rovers as a coach right away after retiring, and by January 2023, he was hired as Livingston’s first team coach to work with David Martindale.
However, he left the then-Scottish Premiership team at the end of the 2022–2023 season before spending some time as the interim coach of Huntsville City, an Alabama-based MLS Next Pro team.
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