Ipswich vs Blackburn prediction: ENGLAND: Championship betting tips on match 2023-09-22 14:00.
Ipswich’s promising return to Championship football following their promotion from League One continued on Tuesday night with victory away against Southampton, a Premier League outfit last term. The 1-0 win on the south coast, described by boss Kieran McKenna as a “top performance”, was their second consecutive triumph by the same margin and leaves Town third in the Championship table having won six of their first seven.
McKenna’s side won 13 of their last 15 games in League One last season en-route to a second-placed finish, and have carried that form on into the new campaign, with their only defeat thus far by a one-goal margin to another newly-relegated outfit in Leeds. There has already been talk of back-to-back promotions in East Anglia, talk that could strengthen this weekend with Blackburn on the horizon, a club Ipswich are unbeaten against at Portman Road since November 1994 (W3, D6 since).
Since dropping out of the top flight in 2012, Rovers have themselves also tasted League One football in recent years, but fans would have been hopeful of another promotion push this season after they missed out on last year’s Championship play-offs via goal difference alone. They were pipped to the post by Sunderland back then, who coincidentally beat them 3-1 at Ewood Park in midweek, a result which made it five straight league games to alternate between a win and loss, and push them back down into the mid-table mire.
Wednesday’s defeat was also a second time in the last three games that Blackburn have conceded three goals. They let in three or more eight times in league alone last term, an issue Danish boss Tomasson will be desperate to fix if they’re to be successful in their promotion bid this time around, but considering they kept two clean sheets across the league and cup here in East Anglia last season against Ipswich’s bitter rivals, Norwich, this may not be a bad place to start.
Players to watch: Conor Chaplin has grabbed three of Ipswich’s 13 league goals this term, plus the assist for the winner at Southampton. Sammie Szmodics is Blackburn’s biggest threat having netted four times already this season and struck twice in a 4-1 win against Ipswich for former club Peterborough back in 2020.
Hot stat: In the 15 H2Hs since the turn of the millennium, only three saw less than two match goals.