Town defender Christophe Berra would like nothing better than to go into the forthcoming two-week international break on the back of a win at Derby on Saturday.
A win at the iPro Stadium would put Mick McCarthy’s men on seven points from their first five games of the new season but defeat would mean a lowly league position with just four points in the bag and a fortnight to wait until their next taste of Championship action at home to Millwall on September 13th.
Berra said: "You want to go and get a win before the two-week break because you know you have a longer-than-usual wait for your next game. If we could get the three points it would be great.
"We would be able to relax a bit over the next two weeks and maybe enjoy training a bit more than we might if we are stuck on only four points."
Derby are a good attacking team, they play good football and they seem to score a lot of goals. They should have gone up last season after dominating the play-off final.
"They basically just lost out to a late counter-attack and they will probably be hurting from that experience, looking for revenge and to win automatic promotion this season.
"But they are not going to be looking forward to playing us because they will know what they’re in for. We’ll be looking to defend well, take our chances and come back with three points.
"They will expect a high tempo game and they will know they will have to work to get something out of the game.
"I don’t think we get enough credit for playing football. The stats from the game against Norwich showed we made more passes than them. But there have been stats when teams have made a lot more passes than us and we’ve won the game 2-0 or something. Sometimes stats don’t really matter.
"We had two cracking games against them last season — a draw at their place and then a win for us in the return. That’s a good memory from last season because I scored a late winner for us.
"There was a good atmosphere under the lights and we’ll be looking for a similar outcome this time, although it would be good if it was a bit more comfortable.
"But we know how good Derby are at home and we’ll have to play to our maximum to get something out of the game.”