Blues boss Paul Jewell says he doesn’t believe his players will get carried away after Wednesday’s 1-0 Carling Cup semi-final first leg defeat of Arsenal. The 46-year-old begins his Town reign today when the Blues face Millwall at the Den.
Jewell said: "I think it’s important not to get too carried away with one performance. The players’ feet are firmly on the ground, but it’s really important to take positive stuff from the game.
"The players showed terrific character after being beaten heavily at Chelsea. To put in a performance like that against Arsenal shows character and determination. They’ve got it, but they’ve got to produce it again. We’ve got to be positive, but keep our feet on the floor.”
The Liverpudlian was delighted with the "terrific” display against Arsene Wenger’s men but says the team have set themselves high standards for future games: "The only problem with that is that they’ve set the benchmark now and they’ve got to try and do that every week.
"They’ve proved they can do it against one of the best teams in Europe, so we’ve got to try and do that again for the next 20-odd league games.”
Jewell paid tribute to Roy Keane’s exiting coaches, who masterminded the Arsenal performance: "Great credit has to go to Charlie McParland and Tony Loughlan, who prepared the team very well for that game on Wednesday. Along with the players they came up with a game plan and they deserve great credit and showed great professionalism.
"When you play under lights in front of 30,000 at home in a cup competition, people will always tell you that you get energy that you didn’t think you had the week before.
"We want to try and transpose that into our league games, play at a good tempo and I think the most important thing is to play with confidence and belief.”
Jewell says that for the moment, he and the players aren’t thinking about the second leg: "The Emirates isn’t on the radar at the minute. We’ve got Millwall and we’ve got Doncaster to play before then. I’m pretty sure there won’t be any resting on laurels.
"The players know there’s a new manager here and will be trying to impress me. I certainly hope that’s the case. It isn’t as if they came in [on Friday] morning whooping and hollering about how good they were on Wednesday. They know how hard they worked and how hard they’ve got to work in future games.”
Meanwhile, midfielder Colin Healy is determined to establish himself in the side after playing an important role in the victory over Arsenal: "I want to prove to myself that I can still play at this level. I played for two years back in Ireland, got my confidence up, came to Ipswich and didn't really kick on.
"Now I've got a few games under my belt and there's nothing worse than sitting up in the stand, watching the game. You want to be involved, but it's all about hard work isn't it?"