Ipswich Town v Palace

Portman Road, Saturday 3.00pm

The Football League

Team news

Veteran midfielder HUGHES will sit the game out with a broken arm which he sustained in the play-off semi-final defeat against Watford in May.

New signings Leon Cort, Mark Kennedy and Jamie Scowcroft are likely to start. But Matt Lawrence, Carl Fletcher are set for benche appearances.

Ipswich boss Jim Magilton will hand debuts to new signings Alex Bruce and Dan Harding.

Bruce, 21, arrived on a free transfer from Birmingham this week, while left-back Harding joins from Leeds.

Ipswich Town - league stats

Position	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	Points
10th	0	0	0	0	0

Full league table

Our away record v Ipswich Town

Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	For	Against
34	8	8	18	46	69

Last five results

Date	Type	Home Team	Score	Away Team
18/03/2006	League	Crystal Palace	2 - 2	Ipswich Town
26/12/2005	League	Ipswich Town	0 - 2	Crystal Palace
28/12/2003	League	Ipswich Town	1 - 3	Crystal Palace
21/10/2003	League	Crystal Palace	3 - 4	Ipswich Town
11/03/2003	League	Crystal Palace	1 - 1	Ipswich Town

All time results

One to watch

Nicky Forster

Ipswich Town's bad boy

- - 0 0

At last, the new season has finally arrived - we’re off to Ipswich!

Both sides should be looking to impress their new managers – Jim Magilton has filled the void left by Joe Royle. The Town squad is pretty much identical to that of last season but a few youth players will probably be pushing on a little bit.

The Palace line-up will differ somewhat from the same fixture of last season. Five of the starting line-up have moved on and five of Peter Taylor’s signings will be looking to make themselves known to the Palace faithful.

As Taylor has already stated, he is very much undecided about his number 1 goalkeeper but, from what we’ve seen of the pre-season games, Flinders and Király will be looking to compete for the position between the sticks. This was almost confirmed with Speroni being given a run out against Bromley.

Danny Butterfield is likely to replace Fitz Hall in defence [he was playing out of position at right back] with either Darren Ward or Mark Hudson vying for a position alongside Carl Cort [who will be replacing Tony Popovic]. As it stands, we only have three senior centre backs – this could be resolved by the imminent signing of Millwall’s Matt Lawrence.

Mikele Leigertwood showed his versatility by playing at left back, where he performed very well. He stood in for the injured Danny Granville and out of form Gary Borrowdale. Granville is slowly making his way back from injury but is currently being out performed by his understudy, Borrowdale.

Gary has already looked a much more mature player than last season. He’s not only scoring scorchers [Swindon away] but has been putting in assured performances against each of the pre-season teams.

The Palace midfield is looking stronger than it has in years. Taylor has resolved issues that Dowie struggled with for two seasons. Peter has brought in a battling central midfielder who can pass, score and tackle. Fletcher warmed the bench for West Ham last season in the Premiership, but never once looked out of place when he took to the field. One of his best performances was in the FA Cup final against Liverpool.

Mark Kennedy has [hopefully] put an end to our left sided problems. The former Wolves winger can operate on the left wing or central midfield. His range of passing, efforts at goal and leadership skills are something that we lacked last season. With Watson looking out of sorts during pre-season, we may well see Kennedy deployed in central midfield alongside Fletcher, with Riech, McAnuff or Soares deployed on the wings.

Tom Soares has looked unusually confident during his pre-season games. He’s been getting forward to good effect and making short, accurate passes. His tackling hasn’t been bad either.

With Watson and Hughes also competing for a place in the starting line up, the competition for places is very healthy.

Up front is a slightly different issue. Freedman, Morrison and Macken remain from last season but the departures of Wayne Andrews and Andy Johnson have left, what could be, irreplaceable places.

Torghelle has returned from Greece, and he scored a very good goal against Swindon. Macken is the only other striker [other than Grabban] to score during pre-season. Morrison has been getting himself into good positions but his finishing is lacking any sort of precision.

Scowcroft is, so far, the only striker that we’ve brought in. His scoring record isn’t exactly prolific but he is the target man that we’ve missed for the past few seasons and has already shown signs of forming a half decent partnership with Morrison. Scowcroft could well be starting against his previous club – that means the unwritten rule of scoring against your previous club will hopefully be followed.

Pre-season has been pretty poor for Ipswich. They have managed just one win out of 6 friendly matches. However, one positive can be taken from those games – Nicky Forster has continued his goalscoring from the end of last season.

After missing over half of last season due to cartilage operations, Forster managed to knock in 7 goals in 20 appearances [17 starts] and 5 of these 7 goals came in the last 7 games of the season. He also scored two of Town’s pre-season goals – one against Boston Utd [from the penalty spot] and the other against Galway Utd – A rising shot from the edge of the penalty box that hit the roof of the net.

We may see a few more signings in the coming weeks – these are rumoured to be Glen Little, Matt Lawrence and Carl Cort. It’s possible that the latter may be seen by Ipswich now that Palace have cooled their interest in Preston North End striker, David ‘DaNug’ Nugent.

Let’s hope for an away win, an impressive performance and three points next to us on the league table.

For those of you travelling by car on Saturday, take care on the A14 – it’s reported that the tractors are already out in force and traffic is almost at a standstill. If you manage to get to Portman Road on time then I shall a few of you there. Let’s get behind the old boys, new boys and Peter Taylor from the off and be as vocal as possible! Bring it on!

Probable line-up

	Morrison	Scowcroft
McAnuff	Kennedy	Watson	Soares
Borrowdale	Ward	Cort	Butterfield
Kiraly

Last meeting

Ipswich 0 (0) - 2 (1) C Palace Macken 14 Hughes 61 At Portman Road on 26-12-2005

Ipswich: Price ,Sito ,Naylor ,De Vos ,Wilnis (Haynes ,65 ) ,Williams (McDonald ,81 ) ,Garvan ,Juan ,Currie ,Westlake ,Forster Subs not used: Supple,Richards,Magilton,

C Palace: Kiraly ,Hall ,Ward ,Popovic ,Leigertwood ,McAnuff ,Watson (sent off 89),Hughes (Hudson ,80 ) ,Soares ,Macken (sent off 77),Johnson (Morrison ,89 ) Subs not used Speroni,Freedman,Andrews,

Bookings: Garvan ,Juan ,Naylor (Ipswich) Hughes ,Johnson ,Leigertwood ,Macken ,Popovic ,Watson (C Palace)

Attendance: 27392

Referee: A Woolmer (Northamptonshire)