Boss Paul Jewell says his players are now looking forward to home matches having admitted that they were anxious about games at Portman Road earlier in the season. Town will be out to extend their winning home run to six games when Middlesbrough return to Suffolk tonight for the restaging of February’s abandoned match.
Jewell says the current Portman Road winning streak, the longest since eight victories in a row at the start of the 2007/08 campaign, is the result of increased confidence amongst his squad: "The players are going into games, especially the home games, and you can see and feel the excitement within the dressing room.
"They’re looking forward to playing at home, whereas in the dark days of October, November and December, we were looking towards home games with trepidation, and you could feel that.
"Our nervousness was transmitting itself through to the crowd, but at the moment, we’re full of positive energy, we know that this league is very tough and there are eight more challenges left, which is difficult, but we’re going into every game at the moment believing we can win it.”
He says the fans are also happier with life: "I think the supporters are looking forward to home games now as well. We know we can get back on a decent surface with a decent atmosphere at Portman Road and we’re looking to enjoy our football. We know we’ve got four tough games left at home but they’re ones we’re really looking forward to.”
Jewell is glad his team play on Portman Road’s rather smoother pitch having experienced playing regularly at a ground similar to Watford’s earlier in his management career: "At Wigan we had rugby played at home and we hated it. We just didn’t look forward to home games.
"From the stands everything looks OK. But when you get on it, it’s tufty and bobbly. The groundsman [at Vicarage Road] was putting water on it after the game, which is no good to us.
"When pitches are like that, the best thing you can do is to get it soaking. If it had been raining that would have been great, but with the heat, the pitch was bobbly and in the second half it wasn’t a great spectacle.
"I’m not knocking Watford, and what I would say about us is that it’s all about being able to win games differently. We’ve got to be able to scrap games out, we’ve got to be able to play football matches.
"So as much as I’m saying the pitch wasn’t great, it wasn’t great for both sides and we’ve got to try and manage the pitch better than we did on Saturday.”
The Town boss was impressed with the Blues’ away following at the weekend: "We had brilliant support at Watford on Saturday. It was terrific support.
"They’re the lifeblood of any club and we want to get them excited and looking forward to matches rather than thinking the season might look as if it’s going to yield another year of mid-table obscurity. We’re hopeful that in the future we can give them something to really shout about.”
Meanwhile, Academy keeper Cody Cropper won’t be going to the Olympics after the US crashed out in the qualification stages last night. El Salvador scored a goal deep into injury time to grab a 3-3 draw and leave the US third in their group and eliminated.
Cropper, who returned from his knee injury to play for the U18s for the first time on Saturday, wasn’t involved in the qualifiers but was included in a US U23 squad assembled with a view to the Olympics early in the season.
Elsewhere, Town associate director Michael Spencer was one of the Conservative Party donors to attend the controversial private dinners and lunches with Prime Minister David Cameron, a long-term friend. Spencer, who donated almost £280,000, is also a former treasurer and member of the board of the Conservative Party.
Associate directors hold no power at the club, the title having been given to the higher investors at the time of the 2004 share issue.
Spencer’s £200,000 was the largest investment in that share issue and the chief executive of ICAP subsequently added to that figure.
After the club’s 2007 takeover by Marcus Evans, Spencer’s stake was diluted along with all the shares in the PLC which now owns 12.5% of the club. Spencer is understood to have little interest in football and rarely to have spent time at Portman Road.