Town boss Mick McCarthy felt his side deserved their 2-1 victory at Wigan despite the home side’s late fightback.
"I thought it was an excellent performance,” he said. "Maybe at the start they surprised me, I thought they’d play 3-5-2 but I knew even if they played 4-3-3, which they did, we were set up to play against that, and I thought our front three would cause them problems whether it was a three or a four and that’s what happened. It was a good performance.
"After the first five, we got a foothold, we got organised a bit better and once we did that we were the dominant force in the game.
"I know there’ll be talk about the last 10 minutes when they hit the post and they had a shot that missed, but we could have been more than the ones up by that stage, I thought.
"It’s nice when a plan comes together and works and I think it did tonight. I can come up with all sorts of high-falultin ideas about what to do and how to play but unless the players buy into it and do it, I’ve got no chance, and thankfully they did.”
Asked whether the recalled Luke Hyam was trying to make a point with his goal, the Blues boss added:"That’s lovely if that’s the case. The last thing I want to do is put somebody in and he has a sulk up. I never expected that he would because he’s such a good professional.
"I think he’s proved that with his performance, and he’s scored, which was maybe one of the reasons he got left out because we haven’t had enough goals from midfield. Well, he’s given me nice headache, hasn’t he?”
McCarthy was similarly delighted for Conor Sammon, who scored his first goal for the Blues: "Thrilled for him. He had one where it just hit him in the first half. I thought he grew into the game. I thought he got better and better, Conor.
"He’s not played a lot, he was a sub at Derby for a lot of games and you need to ply your trade to do it properly and let’s hope he’s going to do that for us on a regular basis.”
Sammon celebrated joyously after netting against one of his old clubs and McCarthy says he’s no fan of the modern fad for players not to celebrate against their previous employers.
"I think it’s bollocks that, personally,” he said. "I think it’s the biggest load of nonsense ever. Are you ever going to go back to that club?
"My club’s Ipswich, I’ve had a few, but let me tell you I’m not bothered about who we’re playing against. If we win I’ll be giving it large, and that’s from every club I’ve been at. My loyalty is to Ipswich.”
He says Jay Tabb wouldn’t have started even if he hadn’t been unwell: "Jay wasn’t playing anyway, I’d left him and Ando out, but he was poorly. He would have been on the bench, but he was poorly so he went home.”
Regarding Jack Collison, who played for the U21s against Huddersfield this afternoon, McCarthy says the offer of a contract is still on the table: "I’ve offered him a short-term deal, exactly the same as Darren Ambrose. If he wants to take it, I’m happy to do it.
"I’d like to help him, he’s a great lad, a great pro, he’s a had a bit of a tough time with his injuries and it could end up being symbiotic deal.”
Wigan boss Uwe Rosler felt Town went into the game with a physical approach: "I felt we started very well in the first 10 minutes and then we lost momentum. I think Ipswich came with a clear plan, they wanted to rough us up.
"They tried to make the game a scrap. In periods they dominated our midfield, we couldn’t get the ball down to the midfield and weren’t strong enough to win a lot of second balls.
"I felt the goals came out of nothing. For the first goal we had I don’t know how many we had in the box but we were watching the ball and not taking people out.
"The second goal was a typical description of the game plan that they had; the long ball bouncing into the defender, it came back, second ball, running from them, then a quality through ball from McGoldrick and we were ball-watching and not staying with the man.
"But in general I thought the response we showed in the last 20 or 25 minutes speaks for the character for the players and the spirit in the camp.
"We should have got something out of the game. When you have 19 or 20 attempts you should get more out of the game and we had good chances, it’s not like we had chances from distance.”
Rosler was disappointed with referee Andy Woolmer and particularly with his decision to only book Christophe Berra for the first-half foul which eventually led to Callum McManaman being forced off injured: "It was a very debatable performance from the referee.
"When you let that go and let players get away with it, then obviously they will do that. I spoke about it weeks ago, a player like Callum McManaman needs to have some sort of protection but you saw the outcome today, he had to come off and it doesn’t look so good.
"I think they targeted him, they wanted to take him out of the game and they succeeded and I would have liked the referee, probably, to have stopped that.
"Watching Premier League football yesterday and the sort of yellow cards they were giving out there compared to the ones given out today, it looked like I was watching two different sports.”