Town are heading in the right direction, midfielder Cole Skuse has insisted, regardless of whether or not they capture a play-off place this season.
Skuse is in his first season at Portman Road but his conversations with colleagues who have clocked up several years’ service have confirmed progress is being made.
He said: "I have spoken to the lads here regarding last year and recent years. They’ve said how big a stride has been made in such a short time. It’s unbelievable really.
"When the manager came in I think the town and the club in general sensed that they’d got the right man. I can only speak about what I saw last year and the strides that have been made are tremendous.
"It’s a great club trying to do things the right way, on and off the field. They’re not trying to cut any corners. It’s a very, very good club and a very stable club.
"I can only speak from what I’ve seen. I’ve only been here a short period but I know a lot of the lads have said that the club has made strides from what was happening last year.
"Obviously, Ipswich were in a similar boat to Bristol City when I was there last year. They did well to drag themselves away from the bottom three.”
Things changed immediately for the better with the arrival of manager Mick McCarthy, who inherited a team stuck at the bottom of the Championship with seven points from their first 13 games of the season when he took charge in November 2012.
Having achieved his aim to ensure Town avoided relegation, McCarthy has taken Town to the fringes of the play-off places in the current campaign, despite spending virtually nothing on transfer fees to assemble his new-look squad.
Skuse added: "I think our form all season has been pretty steady. We’ve not picked up as many wins as we’d have liked and we’ve drawn games we think we should have won, but away from home we’ve been good. We’re hard to beat, we’ve looked solid and teams are finding it hard to break us down.
"It’s a great dressing room. It’s a great, honest, bunch of boys. To be right in the mix with quite a small squad, I think we’re doing an unbelievable job and hopefully we can go on a final little push now and finish in those play-off places.”
Just how hard they are to beat will be severely tested tomorrow when they take on league leaders Leicester at the King Power Stadium, where Nigel Pearson’s team have won 11 and drawn three of their 15 Championship fixtures this season.
Skuse said: "He is a good manager. He’s proven he’s no mug in the football game and he’s very highly thought of.
"The squad of players they’ve got is good. They spent a bit of money in previous years and didn’t get it quite right, but they seem to have struck a good balance now. Fair play to them.”