Boss Mick McCarthy has again emphasised the importance of everyone at Portman Road sticking together as he looks to guide the Blues out of the relegation zone.
The Town manager had praise for the Town support during his four games at the club, particularly at Leicester last week when many of them stayed to the bitter end: "It’s about ‘us’, the collective that is Ipswich Town — the club, the fans, the players, everyone else together. If we are in it together we’ve got a better chance of thriving and prospering.
"They’ve been great, we’ve got to give them something more to shout about than we did at Leicester. But the last home game was a really good performance, and a good win.
"I’ve only been here for three weeks but they’ve been very good and I thought the away fans last week were terrific and most of them stayed until the very end, which is a bit of a surprise because even I might have turned and done one. I thought about it at 4-0, actually," he joked.
"Our fans have been great, we need all them with us. Without them we’re poorer for it, that’s for sure. We need that vocal support.”
He says Town’s lowly position should be the motivation for the players to work even harder: "When I came here the club was rock bottom and everyone could see it was struggling.
"We are struggling still, but it makes you work harder when there’s a bit of insecurity and you’re struggling, and that’s what we have to do.
"It’s that old cliché about coming in, training hard, grafting and getting on with it, and you have to. Whether we lost 6-0 last week, it’s in Monday morning with a smile on your face after we’ve all watched the game and had our things to say, and get on with it and prepare for Saturday.
"We’re still in a bad state, but we’ve had two wins from four and that is a good return out of the four games, which is my positive out of it.”
While the squad trained on Wednesday, their traditional day off, McCarthy insists it wasn't about him castigating them for Saturday’s performance: "I don’t believe in punishment training, we weren’t doing any of that but I’m not sure I could accept them swanning around the shops on Wednesday when they’ve just lost 6-0 at Leicester.
"I wouldn’t expect that the people who come and watch them and who pay their good money would expect that to happen.
"We trained all week, yes. When we’re in the bottom three, I might revisit that, we might have a day off. I’m not bothered, I’m here all week, that’s fine.”
He says he’s not one to bring players in on a Sunday after a defeat: "That used to happen when I was a player in the dark ages. You’d come in and you’d just be legging it because apparently you hadn’t tried.
"Well, our lads tried, I’ve seen all the stats on ProZone, they ran around, unbelievable distances. You tend to run around more when you haven’t got the ball, believe me.
"I wouldn’t do that, I think that’s counter-productive in terms of dealing with people, dealing with men. There might be some days when I might, if I thought we hadn’t tried and we’d given it up and it had been a completely gutless display.
"But we got beaten by a better side, we were all over the shop, but they ran about. They’ve got to see their families like everybody else, and have a bit of time off and rest.”
He admits that he’d have taken the results so far, even if some of the scorelines have been unpalatable: "All day long. Not for the fans, I wouldn’t want them to see us getting beaten 7-0. Don’t think for a minute I enjoyed that or I’d accept that, but in terms of winning one and losing one from now to the end of the season, everybody would take it.”