We asked AI to predict the score for Birmingham City v Ipswich Town on August 8th | OneFootball

The match between Birmingham and Ipswich is one of the most intriguing fixtures of the opening weekend, so FLW asked AI to predict the result.

The opening weekend of the EFL Championship season is just a couple of weeks away, and one of its most intriguing fixtures is the game between Birmingham City and Ipswich Town at St Andrew's on Friday 8th August.

Birmingham City and Ipswich Town will be two of the teams to keep an eye on in the Championship throughout the 2025-26 season.

Birmingham won the 2024-25 League One title with a record-breaking 111 points, while Ipswich were relegated from the Premier League in 19th place, and both will hope to be challenging for a place in the Premier League.

The EFL's fixture-schedulers have pitted these two teams against each other on the opening weekend, in the first match of the season, to be played on Friday 8th August. It's a mouth-watering way to start the Championship season, so FLW have asked ChatGPT to predict the score.

AI can't separate Birmingham and Ipswich on the Championship's opening weekend

ChatGPT predicts a 1-1 draw between Birmingham City and Ipswich Town in the curtain-raiser of their Championship season, with its rationale being that a "1–1 draw looks the most consensus-backed scenario, striking a balance between Birmingham’s home strength and Ipswich’s potential to trouble on the break."

But AI does also choose to hedge its bets by also suggesting the possibility of a narrow win for both teams. It gives a predicted goals tally of 1-2 for both teams, suggesting the possibility of a 1-0 Birmingham win or a 2-1 Ipswich win.

Birmingham and Ipswich both need a strong start to their Championship seasons

Both Birmingham and Ipswich will be hoping to come out of the traps at full speed on the opening weekend of the season.

Despite the lengthy slog of the 46-match season, the margins between success and failure can be very narrow indeed and three points won or lost in August are worth just as much as three points won or lost in May.

Under normal circumstances, a team freshly relegated from the Premier League would be clear favourites to win a match against a team just promoted from League One, but Birmingham City's position since their 2023 takeover by Knighthead have not been "normal circumstances" by any stretch of the imagination.

Birmingham have plans for a 62,000-capacity stadium, and to make that viable they need Premier League football. They've already brought in ten new players to help them achieve this, including Kyogo Furuhashi, Demarai Gray, Phil Neumann, Tommy Doyle and Eiran Cashin. Ipswich, meanwhile, have lost talismanic striker Liam Delap to Chelsea, but have brought in four new players, including Azor Matusiwa, Ashley Young and Cedric Kipre.

One of the bigger ironies of this fixture is that, while the two successive promotions into the Premier League that Birmingham City are targeting is both rare and exceptionally difficult, this is something of which Ipswich have experience. ChatGPT cannot see anything between these two sides on the opening weekend, and it's difficult to argue with its analysis.