Ipswich vs Bournemouth Betting Tips & Preview

AFC Bournemouth to win

Bournemouth arrive at Portman Road on the back of four straight wins and look the form side in this fixture by some distance. Ipswich, by contrast, have managed just one win in their last four completed matches and have drawn their last two, a sign of a team that's competitive but struggling to find the cutting edge against sides in good nick. The head-to-head picture over the last five meetings is fairly even on paper, but recent momentum sits firmly with the visitors, and that's the main driver behind backing AFC Bournemouth to win here. The best price available for that outcome is 1.95, which is simply the market context rather than the reason for the selection.

Recent Form

Ipswich's last run of results shows a side with some fight but inconsistent end product. They beat Fulham at home on 10 October, then lost away to Manchester City a week later, before back-to-back draws against Nottingham Forest and Hull City closed out October. That's one win, two draws and a defeat from their last four completed games, hardly the sort of form to inspire confidence against a team hitting its stride.

Bournemouth, on the other hand, have won every one of their last four matches. They beat Manchester United away, followed that with a home win over Aston Villa, then saw off Leeds United at home before adding a win away at Sparta Praha. Four wins on the bounce, home and away, against a mixed bag of opposition, is about as strong a platform as a team can take into a fixture like this.

Head-to-Head

The last five meetings between these two clubs have been tightly contested, with Bournemouth holding a slight edge at 3-1-1 in their favour. Ipswich's most recent win came in April 2025 away at Bournemouth, but that was immediately preceded by a Bournemouth win at Portman Road back in December 2024. Before that, the fixture produced three draws in a row, stretching back to 2014 and 2015, suggesting this has historically been a fixture with little to separate the sides. That history doesn't carry much weight against the current form gap, though it does hint that Ipswich are capable of making this closer than the formlines suggest.

Team News

Ipswich have one absence of note, with Ashley Young out since late January with a hip flexor problem. Beyond that, there's nothing else listed to suggest a weakened squad for the hosts.

Bournemouth's list is longer but needs some context. Several of the players marked unavailable — Daniel Jebbison, Veljko Milosavljevic, Junior Kroupi, Juanlu Sánchez, Max Aarons and Fraser Forster, along with one listing for Julián Araujo — are down as unavailable due to eligibility rather than injury. On the injury side, Alex Tóth is out with a hamstring problem since late October, and Julián Araujo also appears separately with a hamstring injury dating back to July. Despite the length of that list, Bournemouth have still managed four consecutive wins, which suggests the squad has enough depth to cope with these absences.