Who To Pick From Ipswich

Drafting from Ipswich

Ipswich sit eighteenth on 76 with 26 names and no elite cards, and the squad leans hard to one side. Coventry and Hull share the same 76, so the foot of the wheel is a three-way tie and shape, not strength, is what separates them. Daizen Maeda at 81 is the best of them by two, and the left touchline behind him is properly stocked: four left wingers to three centre-backs, with Leif Davis at 79 underneath them at left-back. That flank is the reason to spin Ipswich at all.

Now turn the picture round. Thirteen of the 26 are midfielders and only five are defenders, fewer at the back than any other club in the game, and that imbalance is the thing to price in before you draft. Right-back is one man, Dara O’Shea at 74, with nothing behind him, and centre-back is three deep, topped by Issa Diop at 75. Take a couple of Ipswich attackers off the wheel and you still have not touched the part of this squad that needs bodies.

The spread of 7 is the honest number here: from Maeda at the top down to Alex Palmer at 74, who is the eleventh-best card at the club and a goalkeeper. Below Saša Lukić at 78 and the pair of Marcelino Núñez and Abdul Fatawu on 76, the tail runs long and flat, and it ends at Christian Walton on 63, the lowest-rated player in the game. For anyone building an England side, 9 of the 26 are English, the biggest bloc in this squad by a distance, with three Dutchmen next.

The legend to take is Marcus Stewart at 90, and the reason is where the squad is emptiest rather than sentiment. The forwards top out at Chuba Akpom at 74 with nothing above him, so Stewart lands sixteen clear of the best striker here and gives the attack a centre-forward instead of another body cutting in off Maeda’s flank. Matt Holland on 90 is the alternative if you would rather run the game through the middle, fourteen above Núñez, and Richard Wright at 89 patches the goalkeeping, which is the weakest group at the club. Take one of them: with nobody in the squad rated 82 or better, the legend is the only pick here that changes a game.