This weekend sees the renewal of one of English football's most intense rivalries, when Ipswich Town take on Norwich City at Portman Road.
Matchday 4 of the Sky Bet Championship includes a host of local clashes, culminating in Sunday's 98th East Anglian derby which will be screened live on Sky Sports at noon.TV Games: A list of upcoming EFL games to be screened live on Sky Sports
Season so far
A mixed bag for Ipswich, who have won one, lost one and drawn one of their three league matches, in that order.
Hat-trick hero Grant Ward inspired opening-day success over Barnsley, but the Tractor Boys have failed to muster a goal since. A 2-0 defeat to Brentford followed, before a 0-0 stalemate with Wolves in midweek.
Mick McCarthy's side also crashed out the EFL Cup, losing 1-0 at home to Sky Bet League Two Stevenage.
Norwich, on the other hand, are unbeaten and sit second among a clutch of four sides with seven points in the Sky Bet Championship.
A 4-1 rout of Blackburn Rovers was the perfect start following last term's relegation, and they got the better of Bristol City in a tight affair at Carrow Road on Tuesday night. In between came a draw at home to Sheffield Wednesday, with neither side finding a way through in Norfolk.
Previous
As mentioned earlier, there have been 97 previous meetings between the pair, the first finishing 5-0 to Ipswich in September 1946.
It's the blue side of East Anglia with the 40-39 lead in the head-to-head – with a further 18 draws – but the Canaries have been singing louder over recent times.
Six matches have passed since the Suffolk side owned the bragging rights, courtesy of a 3-2 win in 2009. Since then, Norwich have won four league games by an aggregate score of 12-2, and that's before we get on to the most recent match-ups.
Those last two games came, of course, in the 2014/15 Play-Offs. A 1-1 draw at Portman Road was followed up by a 3-1 home win for Alex Neil and his charges, who went on to win at Wembley and claim a place in the top flight.
Earning their Spurs
Two players to watch out for this weekend are a duo that arrived at their respective clubs from Tottenham Hotspur ahead of the new season.
Grant Ward spent 11 years with the North Londoners before Mick McCarthy signed him up at the beginning of this month, and his debut gave us more than a glimpse of what's to come from the 21-year-old.
A few days later, Alex Pritchard – who had been at White Hart Lane since the age of eight – was snapped up by Norwich. The 23-year-old midfielder has missed the last two games through injury, but could return to the fray for the weekend battle.
Don't miss it!
Sky Sports coverage of the 98th East Anglian derby begins at 11:30am, and the game kicks off at 12pm.
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