Ipswich Town are returning to England's top division after 23 years. The club last week began a comprehensive preparation of the arena standards to meet minimum league requirements.

Urgent redevelopment needed

Work has already begun on upgrading Portman Road stadium in the East of England. We do not know the exact amount the work will cost, but it has been estimated at several million pounds. What does the project involve?

As part of the concept, the club will rebuild 2 of its 4 covered and multi-level stands. Executive boxes will be installed at the west end of the stadium - the most prestigious VIP seats. Upper Cobbold stand seating will be created and the number of visitor passes will be increased from 2,000 to 3,000 to meet Premier League requirements. As a result, around 750 pass holders will be relocated to new seats in another part of the arena.

In addition, the upgrade will include new:

• camera points around the stadium and TV gantry;
• studio above the control room;
• floodlights.

The Ipswich Town Foundation, which provides a range of sporting activities for the local community, has said that the pitch layout next to the west stand will be slightly reduced.

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Voice from club

All of this work is costing several million pounds, but it has to be done. These are minimum requirements. Fans have approached change fantastically well in the past and I would ask them to do the same again. These projects have been thought through in detail. We have challenged ourselves, we have worked with the local authority, we have worked with key stakeholders to come up with what we believe are the best solutions.Our floodlights are around 750/800 wattage and we've got to up them to around 1700/1800 wattage for the whole stadium. We'll move to an LED system. The whole stadium is going to look very, very different under light managing director of sport Mark Ashton told TownTV.

The stadium is returning to the Premier League map after 23 years. The arena's glory years are long behind it, but the top teams in English football will play there in the 2024/25 season. Ed Sheeran's favourite team can consider the past season a memorable one, and they will enter the next one with high hopes of staying up. How far will the East of England club go?

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