Ipswich Town 2-1 Sunderland: Jack Clarke’s Late Winner Seals Victory on Premier League Return

Opening day of the brand-new season. A sold-out Portman Road, with the fans buzzing with excitement ahead of their return to the Premier League, welcomed Sunderland, and the action certainly didn’t disappoint.

Despite the early enthusiasm, it was nearly the nightmare start, as it was the Black Cats who had the first big chance of the game. Within the third minute, Brian Brobbey was sent through on goal, only to be denied by a brilliant block from Leif Davis.

After coming through a difficult first 20 minutes, Ipswich began to find their feet, particularly through Julio Enciso, who was the Man of the Match, as his creativity and vision allowed his team to provide a serious threat throughout the game.

It was in the 23rd minute where this threat turned into the opening goal, as Enciso intercepted a slack pass from Luke O’Nien before dancing through two challenges to be one-on-one with the keeper.

Instead of shooting, he decided to square it to Emersonn (one of seven debutants in the Ipswich line-up), who could not miss.

At this point, you could forgive the Ipswich fans and players for being ecstatic. However, they were about to learn a valuable lesson: the Premier League is ruthless, and at any given moment, you can and will be punished.

Quickly after scoring, Noah Sadiki was denied by a fine stop from Kjell Scherpen, which served as a major warning that danger was ahead.

Gary O’Neil’s side failed to heed the warning and were well and truly punished, as Issa Diop gave away a silly free-kick moments later, which resulted in Nilson Angulo stepping up and bending a superb effort into the underside of the bar, levelling the score going into half-time.

The second half saw both teams continue with the high-energy pressing, but they couldn’t find a way through. The game started to peter out, particularly when Enciso came off through injury.

Long-time viewers of the Premier League know this league has a habit of creating storylines, so when Jack Clarke, the ex-Sunderland star, came on, you just had a feeling something could happen.

In the 90th minute, the stars aligned as Clarke picked up the ball on the edge of the box before shifting the ball onto his right and curling into the bottom-right corner, setting up jubilation from the stands.

This result, along with what we saw earlier, is great for the league, as it shows that newly promoted teams, in particular at home, have a fighting chance to, at the bare minimum, be competitive and maybe even survive.