Despite winning just one of their last five games new midfielder Cole Skuse believes some of Town’s play would not have looked out of place on the biggest stage of all, the Champions League.
Skuse, 27, highlighted an impressive phase during last month’s home victory over Brighton, when the Blues strung together a host of passes down their left side, to help illustrate his point.
He said: "We kept the ball for a good 30 or 40 seconds — I think it was because I wasn’t involved. There were little bits and bobs and flicks, and I think Cressy almost got in until his parachute came out the back and slowed him down. It was a great bit of play.”
Skuse fought an eventually unsuccessful survival battle with former club Bristol City last season and recalled: "Ipswich were in a similar position last season to what we were in.
"The new manager, Sean O’Driscoll, came in and a lot of people said ‘You’ve got a great manager and you will play loads of football’ but in the position we were in we couldn’t afford just to be a tippy-tappy team. I don’t know but it might have been a similar scenario here. You’re playing to get the results to stay up.”
When, almost a year ago, manager Mick McCarthy inherited a team bottom of the league he knew it would be a battle to beat the drop and Town did it by scrapping their way to a series of no-frills wins and draws that eventually saw them survive in the Championship.
But Skuse has revealed that McCarthy and assistant Terry Connor were both anxious for the team to adopt a more expansive approach in the current campaign.
He added: "When we came back for pre-season TC and the manager touched on the fact that they had done enough to stay up last year but they wanted to do the flip side of it this year, play a bit more and pass a bit more.
"I think we’ve done that. We have watched replays of some games — and I know we have only done it in small doses — but some clips wouldn’t look out of place in the Champions League.
"Don’t get me wrong, we’ve still got foundations that if we’re not doing the manager picks up on straight away. There are certain things that you know you’ve got to do.
"But after that he tells us ‘You are footballers, you don’t just get paid to stand in a slot. You can use your imagination and go and create a little bit as well’.
"He gives you that bit of freedom, especially in the final third, to do your bit and I think David McGoldrick has been a good example this year. When he gets in that final third the shackles come off. He does what he wants to do and creates that little bit more.”