Midfielder or striker Daryl Murphy says new manager Mick McCarthy is just the man to get Town out of their current situation. The 29-year-old Irishman previously played for McCarthy at Sunderland.
Murphy told the Irish Herald: "I had a full season of working under Mick, he has a great record in the Championship and if anyone can get us out of the mess we're in, it's Mick McCarthy.
"We just had a brief chat with Mick yesterday and he took us for training. I think I'm the only player that has played under Mick before [Carlos Edwards had a spell on loan with him at Wolves - TWTD], so it was good to hook up with him again and I think his record is excellent.
"It's hard for Mick to come into a situation like this, a team at the bottom of the table and where confidence is a bit low, but I know how Mick works and I think he has the character to get us out of it.
"Relegation is a horrible feeling and it would be unthinkable for a club like Ipswich Town to go down into League One, so we have to make sure that doesn't happen.
"I have worked with Mick before, he was the manager who gave me my second chance in England as he took me from Waterford United to Sunderland.”
Murphy, who had previously been a trainee at Luton Town, says he was disappointed to see McCarthy move on from the Stadium of Light: "When he brought me over to Sunderland everything looked great over there: Sunderland had just been promoted under Mick and we were all looking forward to the Premier League. But we ended up getting relegated and I was very sorry to see Mick leave.
"He won't have much time to settle in but from Mick's point of view he knows that we can't do any worse than we have been doing in the last while. All the players know that we have to start picking up points and winning games.
"There's almost a six-point gap between us and the team ahead of us, so if we don't start getting some points on board soon there could come a time when we're so far behind that even if we win some games it won't make any difference.”
Murphy, who admits his international career is now over, says everyone at Portman Road will have a blank sheet of paper: "It's a fresh start, everyone wants to try and get into the team, everyone will want to impress Mick. We have a big squad and we need to just start winning games, starting tomorrow.
"We have thrown away a lot of points. In lots of games we have been in front but we can't kill teams off.
"We just have to be more ruthless. We've had chances to kill teams off and not taken them, so Mick can maybe put that right.”