Blues boss Mick McCarthy believes there’s feeling of optimism around Portman Road after Town’s impressive second half of the 2012/13 campaign. The Blues would have been sixth in a Championship table which started on November 1st, the day McCarthy took charge.
The Town manager says a new season is a new beginning for bosses at most clubs: "I think wherever you start it’s always a blank start, a clean sheet.
"It might be different if you had a tough time last season because people are waiting and saying ‘We’ll give him a chance this season, we’ll see how he goes’.
"If you had a good finish like we did there’s a bit of optimism around the place, thinking we can have a good season this season.
"I guess that’s from all of us, from me, the players, from the fans, but it’s still a clean sheet. We’ve still got to go to Reading with no points on August 3rd.”
He says that having taken over with Town in trouble at the bottom of the league last season, there might be a bit more pressure on him this time around: "There’s two ways of looking at that.
"There was no pressure on me coming in when we were bottom of the league on seven points, it was doom and gloom and despondency, everybody thought we were going to get relegated.
"I have to be honest, I took a real risk in taking [the job], to have come in and not to have stayed up would have been devastating for the club and also for me as a manager.
"Thankfully, that didn’t happen, we had a great season from November onwards. And then there’s a difference now. Having had that really good end to the season there’ll be an expectation that wasn’t there, that adds a pressure.
"But I’m not bothered about that. I don’t go home and worry about people thinking we’re going to have a good season or we’re going to have a bad season. I crack on with it and do it how I do it.”
He believes the squad can take last season’s form into the new campaign: "I think the momentum is with the players, how they feel.
"Because of what we achieved at the end of last season we think now we’ve got a chance going forward and we could be competitive.
"That’s the momentum in their heads, they believe [because of] what we did and [because] we’ve still got the nucleus of the team. Almost the same the back four, except Stears, but we’ve got Elliott Hewitt, who played in a number of games.
"We’ve got the midfield except Guirane N’Daw and we’ve got the strikers. So, we’ve got that and I think they probably look at it and think ‘Wow, we had a good end, we can take that on’, and let’s hope that’s the case.”
McCarthy wouldn’t be drawn on his precise target for the campaign ahead: "My goal for last season was staying safe because I came in in November and we were bottom of the table with seven points.
"I’m certainly not going to say it in public or in front of everybody. As clichéd as you want, I’d take as many points as we can get starting with the first game and working through to the last game and we’ll see what happens.
"I’m not setting any targets. I might do for the players but I’m not going to set them here.”