Celtic gave Ipswich Town one of the EFL’s most feared attackers – He lit up Portman Road | OneFootball

Daryl Murphy went on to become one of the best strikers in the EFL after Celtic allowed him to move to Ipswich Town.

Back in the summer of 2011, Ipswich Town completed the signing of Daryl Murphy on an initial loan deal. Not many knew at the time that the Tractor Boys were bringing in someone who would go on to be one of the very best strikers in the EFL.

Waterford-born Murphy began his professional career with Luton Town but didn’t make a senior appearance for the Hatters, having been loaned out to Harrow Borough for a short spell in his one and only season at Luton.

He then began his career in earnest with hometown club Waterford United before earning a move back to England and joining Sunderland in 2005, albeit his Black Cats never took off despite making over 100 appearances for the Wearsiders.

Having been loaned out to both Sheffield Wednesday and then Ipswich, where he went on to impress, Murphy then signed for Scottish giants Celtic, but after just one season he was shipped back to Ipswich.

Ipswich was where his career in England ignited and earned him a move to Celtic for a fee believed to be in the region of £800,000 – and it would be back at Portman Road where he would lay down a marker.

Murphy’s Ipswich stint

In his first loan spell in Suffolk, Murphy had scored six goals in 18 appearances for the club, earning him a move to Celtic in the summer of 2010.

Having struggled at Parkhead, he began a second loan spell at Ipswich in August 2011 and he would struggle to make much of an impact once again.

Despite that, Ipswich signed him on loan for a second successive season in the 2012/13 campaign and his overall play continued to develop with a few more goals scored, too.

Then, having joined Ipswich on a permanent basis in 2013 on a free transfer, Murphy sprung into life with 13 goals in 45 games during the 2013/14 season and then 27 in 44 during the 2014/15 campaign.

In that 2014/15 season, Ipswich finished sixth in the Championship, which saw them reach the play-offs in the second-tier for the first time in a decade, with Murphy paramount to their relative success that year.

For much of that decade, Ipswich had been a mid-table also-ran, but the form and presence of Murphy allowed them to become a lot more than that for a season and give supporters something to get behind as they were taken on a ride under the management of Mick McCarthy, but led on the pitch by Murphy.

His general technical ability was never in doubt throughout the early part of his career, scoring the occasional screamer for Sunderland and Celtic, but his ability to match that with a poaching nous allowed him to thrive back in the EFL, and that habit of scoring a stunner never went away, perhaps most notably with an excellent volley from outside of the box against Brighton and Hove Albion in 2015.

His time at Ipswich saw him earn a move to Newcastle United, where he had been in the academy, for an initial fee of £3 million in the summer of 2016 at the age of 33, having scored 67 goals in 225 games across four stints for the club.

Murphy's post-Ipswich career

Having joined Rafa Benitez’s Newcastle, Murphy was a fringe player in a stacked title-winning squad, but he still managed to score five goals in 15 Championship appearances for the Magpies before moving to Nottingham Forest in 2017.

Whilst with Forest, Murphy was again more of an impact player off the bench to sniff out goals, and he did make it into double figures for the Reds, despite limited starts.

In 2019, he joined a Bolton Wanderers side that had begun the season on -12 points and failed to score a goal in the opening month of campaign and forced to play academy players due to major financial difficulties.

As part of an influx of players under Keith Hill, Murphy established himself as Bolton’s star man and scored eight goals in 24 games for the eventually relegated Trotters.

After his stint at Bolton, Murphy returned to his former club and hometown team Waterford, where he eventually retired in 2021.

Internationally, the poacher played eight times for the Republic of Ireland in 2007 and 2008 before having to wait for his recall until 2014, whilst with Ipswich. He scored three goals in 32 caps in total for the Boys in Green.

Murphy started out as a player with immense potential before somewhat fading and treading water, before truly igniting his career as a menace to EFL defences down at Portman Road.

He helped transform Ipswich from a middle-of-the-road Championship side to a genuine promotion challenger, finally matching up his technical ability with an efficiency in the final third - and all of that came as a result of a free transfer.