This Saturday will be a historic day for our town. As we wake up to a (hopefully!) sunny August weekend, Ipswich will once again be decked in blue ahead of the new football season.

There will be that nervous excitement that a new football season always brings. In every corner of the town, debates will be raging about pre-season, the business in the transfer market, the likely starting XI, and how Liverpool will set up post-Klopp.

Tomorrow morning, pubs will polish their glasses, shops will roll up their shutters and restaurants will fire up their ovens, all ready for a captive audience of thirty thousand football fans, ready for Town’s biggest game in a generation.

That’s why this Saturday isn’t just a big day for football fans. Indeed, the impact that Premier League status has on our town is not just confined to Portman Road. The benefits aren’t just felt by the legions of fans lucky enough to get tickets.

The opportunities that Premier League status brings to our town are enormous. As the games start coming thick and fast, our local business owners and their staff will settle into a familiar Premier League matchday rhythm. Whether the games take place in the rain of a midweek winter kick-off, or the glorious sunshine of a spring 6-pointer, the income that tens thousands of fans will bring to our town will be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, a crucial catalyst as we look to support local businesses and revive our town centre.

The prospect of thousands of new customers from Liverpool, Manchester or London every fortnight is an opportunity to put Ipswich on the map.

Of course, this is not the first time that away fans have come to our town, but the Premier League - with all its extra money, its travelling media circus and international profile - gives Ipswich a platform that, quite simply, no other competition can.

To think that we have the chance to showcase the local businesses we all know and love, our stunning waterfront, and our award-winning parks on a national level. This is an opportunity we cannot pass up, and it will be my job, along with the councils and other community leaders, to maximise the benefits off the pitch.

However, the positives of Premier League football aren’t just confined to the commercial. As thousands of people across the globe tune in to an Ipswich match on television sets, some for the first time ever, a new generation of sporting heroes, proudly showcasing our town to a global audience, will be born.

I know that, come September, school playgrounds across Ipswich will be filled with young boys and girls doing their best Conor Chaplin or Omari Hutchinson impressions, meticulously emulating every goal from the previous weekend’s game.

I sincerely hope that these next 38 games set alight the imaginations of young people across our town. I hope the next generation can grow up dreaming of representing their hometown club, drinking in the roar of Portman Road on a Saturday afternoon. Because, the more ambition and imagination our young people have, the richer our town becomes.

So, as our town is engulfed by a sea of blue this Saturday, say a word of thanks to Kieran McKenna and his double promotion winning side, as well as Mark Ashton and the engine room behind the scenes. Because their success is our town’s success. The opportunities of the Premier League are our town’s opportunities. And, the ambition of ITFC - to show the rest of the country the very best of our town - should be our shared ambition too.

Jack Abbott is Labour MP for Ipswich