Boss Roy Keane says he believes his Town side are making progress, even people might think he is mad for saying it. The Blues sit in 12th in the table, two points from the play-offs, which is where the Town manager feels his side currently deserve to be.
Underfire Keane says he will continue to strive to take the club forward for as long as he’s still at Portman Road: "I didn’t come down to Ipswich and move my family to be popular, I came here to do a good job. I’ve got to the 30th June and until that day I will do my utmost to take this club forward.
"And despite what anyone else is thinking, I think we’re making progress. I know people have said I’m a bit mad before and they’ll think I’m even madder after that statement.
"We are going to lose football matches, absolutely. We’re disappointed over the last six weeks in which we’ve gone two goals down in matches and not given ourselves a chance.
"We have to get rid of that we know, but I still think we’re on course for a good season. Judge us on where we are at the end of the season.”
Keane believes that he is becoming a better boss: "I see a manager who is making progress, a manager that will make mistakes, like everyone else, and a manager who is learning.
"But given the right support and respect, I will do a good job, if it’s not at Ipswich it will be somewhere else, simple as that. I will be a successful manager, guaranteed."
The Blues boss says he's in the dark about what might happen beyond his current contract but is enjoying day-to-day life at the club: "I don’t know what the future holds but on a daily basis I come here with my staff and I’m delighted with them, we’re trying our best. We lost a lot of players over the summer, players I didn’t think we were going to be losing, senior players.
"We’re now working with a lot of young players, it probably helps from the club’s point of view that they’re on small wages, but we’re battling on with it and the players are doing well.
"We’re now missing Gareth McAuley and David Norris and we were without Grant Leadbitter last weekend, three of our most senior players. We’ve got four of our kids from the youth team last year on the pitch plus the loan players, who are learning their trade, and they’ve got to listen to a lot of nonsense [from the crowd].”
Keane, who says he’s not targeting any further loan signings at present, is in no doubt that he can be successful with Town: "Absolutely. That hasn’t changed after losing one or two games and showing inconsistency like lots of teams in the Championship.
"Look at the squad we have and the players we lost in the summer and this is where we’re at. Where we are in the table, 12th, is where I think we deserve to be. We’ve got a long way to go, I’ve said that before and even with our strongest team I think we’d do well to get in that top six.
"Take two or three of the senior boys out and we’re short. We see that with other teams, we see that with some of the bigger teams.
"People have got to understand where we’re at. At this moment we’re mid-table and I think that’s where we deserve to be. I don’t think we deserve to be higher or lower.
"We’re a victory away from the play-offs still. We’ve got a good week coming up, a very tough game at Hull and a tough game against Norwich. But they’re two good games for us, particularly away from home so we don’t have to listen to any nonsense.”
Keane feels the club’s lack of success going back before his tenure may also have some bearing on the current pressure from supporters: "Possibly so, but there’ll be other reasons, sometimes your face doesn’t fit and they want instant results and that’s not going to happen, particularly when a decision is made that we’re going to take a policy of working a lot more with our younger players.
"We’re playing players from last year’s youth team, which didn’t pull up any trees. It helps them to be surrounded by three or four senior players, which we didn’t have last weekend.
"Last weekend was a disappointment, there’s no getting away from it, to concede goals like that at home, and the same against Derby. I think those goals could have been prevented.
"What we have to do, despite the nonsense that’s been spoken about tactics in the last few weeks, we’ve got to get back to basics, to what we were at the start of the season. We were hard to beat and I think we’ve been too open the last few weeks.”
Despite the booing and criticism from the terraces, Keane believes the man who counts most, Marcus Evans, gets where the club is at the present time: "The owner does, I’m pretty much sure. He understands what’s going on with the younger players, with the injuries, with the players we’ve lost.”
Meanwhile, midfielder Carlos Edwards says the booing and particularly the cheering of Barnsley's players were "disrespectful" in a Radio Suffolk interview.