With his winner against Birmingham, Kasey McAteer gave Ipswich supporters something to talk about other than Nigel Farage – namely the growing prospect of a return to the Premier League at the first attempt. At the ground where the Reform UK leader had been allowed two weeks before to parade with a “Farage 10” Ipswich shirt, the hosts moved into the automatic promotion places, albeit thanks to a controversially disallowed goal that left their opponents furious.
“I’ve never been as frustrated in my time in football at a decision. We’ve been robbed today,” said Birmingham’s head coach, Chris Davies. A second-half equaliser was chalked off when Ibrahim Osman was ruled to have run the ball out of play before his pullback from which Dara O’Shea turned into his own net, yet replays showed the ball never crossed the line. Davies said: “I asked [the official] after the game: ‘Why did you make that decision?’ and he said: ‘I can assure you the ball was out of play.’ And he was wrong.”
