Town visit Burnley on Saturday looking to leapfrog the Clarets to climb to fifth in the Championship and targeting a club record sixth straight victory on the road.
The sixth-placed Blues made it five in a row by beating Brighton 1-0 at the Amex Stadium on Tuesday, following on from wins at Rotherham, Charlton, the MK Dons and Fulham which equalled a record set in late 1976 by Sir Bobby Robson’s side.
"In terms of achievements, winning five on the bounce, it’s been great and it would be lovely to make it six but it will be a really tough ask because Burnley are a very good side,” manager Mick McCarthy said.
The Clarets and the four sides above them - Middlesbrough, Derby, Hull City and Brighton - had looked set to leave the rest of the division behind only a few weeks ago but Town, on 40 points, now find themselves only a point behind Sean Dyche’s men (41), although McCarthy still views the automatic places as unreachable with leaders Boro on 49 points and second-placed Derby on 48.
"I said on Tuesday night that I don’t think we can catch Middlesbrough and Derby,” he added. "I think it’s a really tall order and I don’t think we can do it because I think they’re too good.
"But I said we’d try like hell to do it and we’ll keep doing it. And you never know, I’ve seen leads get whittled away, providing we just keep doing our job.
"Once you start setting that target, it’s a bit like them at the top, they have to let their guard down, lose a couple and all of a sudden Brighton are back at them and Burnley are at them and suddenly there’s six points in it, five in it. And then the worry starts.
"But I still think they’re too good. I still think they’ll add to already very good squads in the window, so I think that’s difficult. I still say the top six is a really good finish for us.”
McCarthy will be happy if his team perform as they did at the Amex Stadium and in their other recent matches.
"I’d take a repeat performance from Brighton, from Middlesbrough, from Derby and even QPR when it wasn’t a good game but we kept going, we won that game out of pure belligerence and just hard work and endeavour because we went right to the very end,” he said.
"And, I might add, showed a bit of quality because the two goals we scored were really well conceived and both were well finished because I don’t know how Dougie got into that position to score the first one.
"But the second one was just fantastic. It was a quick throw, a great cross and we had a full-back 10 yards from goal heading it in. I’d take the performances we’ve been showing.”
Reflecting on 2015 as a whole, he added: "I think everybody at the club can be proud of the players and they can be proud of themselves having got in the play-offs.
"And actually then having a really bad stroke of luck with the penalty and having one sent off which ultimately cost us.
"And they’ve continued doing it. They come in, they’re all low maintenance, they’re great professionals, great guys, good people, they’re really good representatives for Ipswich Town Football Club. If I can bask in the reflected glory from them, then brilliant, it’s great.”
McCarthy was a big fan of the Burnley side which won promotion from the Championship in 2013/14.
"They had a real team ethic, team spirit. Hard-working, good players doing their jobs, Sam Vokes and Danny Ings scoring all the goals,” he enthused.
"They’ve now got Vokes and Andre Gray, a similar set-up. There were no frills about them, nice football but without making pretty patterns everywhere, they got about and did their work. And they worked like hell.
"When they had to defend they all defended and I really admired the way they did it. And without spending a whole load of money.
"I think it’s different this time, they went and spend £6 million on Andre Gray, a really good signing, a top player in this league.
"There was much to be admired and I don’t think we were too far removed from them, actually, and probably aren’t too far removed from them now.”
The Clarets squad included a number of players who were part of McCarthy’s squad at Wolves.
"Stephen Ward was back in the team the other day, he’s a great lad,” he continued. "Sam Vokes, David Jones, Michael Kightly.
"I think it proves that they’re the sort of players that, as they did with us at Wolves, get you promoted.
"They maybe needed a bit of help to keep them up. Whether we could have afforded it [at Wolves] or whether Burnley could or could get the players, but they’ve come back into the Championship and are still keeping them in the top five and pushing for the top two.
"They’re great lads, they’re really top pros and very similar to the ones I’ve got here now.”
Town beat Burnley 2-0 at home in August, but the Town boss believes the Lancastrians are a different prospect now.
"Andre Gray’s playing for one,” McCarthy said, the former Brentford striker having netted a hat-trick in the 4-0 victory over Bristol City on Monday to take his total for the season to 15, more than anyone else in the Championship, including two for the Bees prior to his move, one against Town on the opening day.
"We caught them on the bounce after their drop from the Premier League.
"Having talked to Dychey afterwards he’d agree with that. We were bang at it and I don’t think they were.
"They were just a little bit ‘I’m not sure about this’, which happens to most teams that get relegated but they’re bang at it again now. They look more like themselves.
"They’re a very similar team to the one that got promoted. They lost Ings but they replaced him with Andre Gray and apart from that they’ve got Kightly and Scott Arfield, Dean Marney and Jones, Joey Barton.
"They’ve still got a very similar back four in Ben Mee, Matt Lowton or Tendayi Darikwa playing at right-back.
"At centre-half there’s Michael Duff and Mee played there the other day and they’ve added Michael Keane, which has helped improve them.
"They’re not far removed from what they were. They’ve kept their team, they’re a good side.”
With the Blues playing their third game in eight days McCarthy will be weighing up whether to rest players who have started the last two matches.
Dean Gerken will continue in goal, while Christophe Berra and Tommy Smith will be at the centre of the defence and skipper Luke Chambers at right-back.
Left-back Jonas Knudsen suffered a knock to a knee at Brighton but is expected to be fit to face the Clarets, however, if he misses out Jonny Parr will come into the team having recovered from his calf injury.
In midfield, with the Blues likely to move back to a 4-4-2 formation matching the home side’s usual set-up, Cole Skuse and Jonathan Douglas are again set to be in the centre.
Ryan Fraser will probably be on the left, while either Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who is over a foot problem, and Kevin Bru is likely to be on the right.
Up front, Daryl Murphy again looks set to be partnered by Freddie Sears with Brett Pitman a substitute as he was at Brighton.
For Burnley, defender Duff (calf), and midfielders Marney (also calf) and George Boyd (back) - who came close to joining the Blues during Paul Jewell’s time as Town boss - have all be suffering with niggles during a Christmas period in which the Clarets lost 3-0 at Hull on Boxing Day before the 4-0 home victory over Bristol City.
Strikers Ashley Barnes and Lukas Jutkiewicz are longer-term absentees with knee injuries.
Manager Dyche is expecting a tough game and is a big fan of his Town counterpart.
"It's a big challenge because they're a good side and I like Mick a lot. He's very honest, calls it how it is and his sides are always awkward to play against," he told the Clarets official site.
"But you could say that about virtually all of the Championship. We're looking forward to it, we're certainly enjoying our home form and how we're going about it and the fans are as well.”
BURNLEY (A): Tickets will be available on the day - CASH only from turnstiles, no price increase #ITFC– ITFC_PlanetBlue (@ITFC_PlanetBlue) December 29, 2015
Out-of-favour Blues winger Cameron Stewart, who is currently on loan with Doncaster, spent the first half of the 2012/13 season on loan at Burnley from Hull, making two starts and seven sub appearances.
Academy coach Alan Lee was a Burnley player between July 1999 and November 2000, scoring once in four starts and 16 sub appearances.
Tony Loughlan, Roy Keane’s first-team coach during his time at Town, currently fills the same role at Burnley.
Historically, Town have won 19 of the games between the sides (18 in the league), Burnley 13 (13) with a further 10 (10) ending in draws.
The Clarets have won only two of their last nine, their last two home matches which both ended 4-0, while the Blues have won seven of their last 10 home and away, further to their five in a row on their travels.
In August at Portman Road, Town climbed to the top of the Championship table as second-half goals from Sears and David McGoldrick saw them to a 2-0 victory.
After an even first half, Sears steered home a Pitman cross in the 66th minute and McGoldrick nodded in the second from a Maitland-Niles corner five minutes later.
The teams last met at Turf Moor on the penultimate weekend of the 2013/14 season with the Clarets already having confirmed their promotion to the Premier League.
Kightly’s 54th minute goal saw the Lancastrians to a 1-0 victory which ended the Blues’ hopes of reaching the play-offs.
Tommy Smith had a first-half header nodded off the line and sub Paul Taylor’s late freekick was well saved, but overall Burnley deserved their victory, which sealed a double over the Blues.
Saturday’s referee is Peter Bankes from Liverpool, who has shown 81 yellow cards and one red in 21 games so far this season.
Bankes, who is in his second season as a Football League referee, has taken charge of one previous Town game, the 2-2 draw with Bristol City in September in which he booked three of the visitors.
Squad from: Gerken, Bialkowski, Chambers (c), Knudsen, Parr, Berra, Smith, Malarczyk, Skuse, Douglas, Hyam, Coke, Tabb, Bru, Maitland-Niles, Fraser, Oar, Sears, Pitman, Murphy, Varney.