Blues boss Paul Jewell says the additions of Paul Taylor, Guirane N’Daw and Daryl Murphy lightened the mood at Friday training after what he admits has been a difficult week in the wake of the 6-0 loss at Blackpool and the Capital One Cup exit to Carlisle.
Jewell said: "In the last week we’ve taken a bit of a knock. We got beaten 6-0 at Blackpool and then the trip to Carlisle didn’t go our way, even though it was never a 6-0 game against Blackpool and the Carlisle game we should have won comfortably, but we didn’t.
"When we sat here last Friday not everything was OK. A week later, it’s not the end of the world. It’s a work in progress. We need to improve the squad, and we will do that.
"We need to be tougher when we come under pressure and we need to be more ruthless when we’re on top in games.
"It sounds simple, but they are the two key factors at any level of football. If you’re not ruthless in the opposition’s box when you get chances and you miss them and you don’t defend well enough when it comes in our box, you’re not going to win matches, and that’s what’s happened in the last two matches. It’s a simple game complicated by coaches.”
He says there was no escape from the post-Blackpool depression, a result he hopes will prove to be a "freak” scoreline: "We stayed up north, we all stayed together on Saturday, Sunday and Monday night and travelled to Carlisle on the Tuesday. Five days we were all together, so there was no hiding, there was no getting away from it.
"We came back into Ipswich at 5am on Wednesday morning very disappointed and flat and even [on Thursday] in training that was the case.
"I said to them this morning that it had been a long week, we’ve got to put it behind us. I don’t want the players to dwell on it. It’s happened but we’ve got to pick ourselves up and we’re looking forward to a home game.”
He says the new additions helped to improve the mood at training this morning: "[Thursday] was a bit flat in training, but today with the new lads in, the lads were in good spirits.”