Town boss Mick McCarthy admits he’s been given a selection headache up front ahead of Saturday’s visit to QPR after subs Luke Varney and Brett Pitman conjured up the Blues’ last-gasp winner during Tuesday’s 2-1 victory over Reading.
Pitman netted his ninth goal of the season, making him the club’s top scorer, from Varney’s superbly weighed low cross and is gaining what McCarthy says is a less than welcome reputation as a super sub.
"That will piss him off no end, I can assure you!” the Town manager laughed. "That’s what he doesn’t want to get.
"He’s given me a selection headache and so has Reg Varney, I thought he was great when he went on, he was the one that set it up. I thought he was terrific.
"Isn’t it lovely that I’ve got two lads like that? I know they don’t want to be known as super subs and they don’t just want to be coming on and contributing like that, they want to start. But that’s a nice problem for me.”
The sides met at Portman Road on Boxing Day when the Blues again left it late before claiming all three points.
"Another late winner,” McCarthy recalled. "They’re another team with good players. I think Reading have punched beneath their weight and I think QPR have as well, although I know what it’s like when a team comes down and you have to shed players and have players who are on a lot of money and you’re having to get them out of the door and can’t play them for different reasons.
"It’s really, really difficult that. And I don’t envy any of them doing it. But I think with Jimmy Floyd in now it seems to have settled down and I’ve no doubt he’ll get them going and they’ll be a success.”
McCarthy was pleased that Tuesday’s win took his side back into the top six, despite the game having been a less than enthralling spectacle.
"It’s a continual scrap to be there but we are still in it,” he said. "There are a few below us who have spent a shedload of money, who will be looking enviously at us and thinking that it’s going to be difficult to catch us.
QPR (A): The Blue Army are out in force tomorrow. 3,178 heading down to Loftus Road. Amazing support. Safe journey to all #ITFC
— ITFC_PlanetBlue (@ITFC_PlanetBlue) February 5, 2016
"If we show the qualities that we did the other night [we’ve always got a chance], and it wasn’t quality football, from either team. They’ve got some good players, Reading, that’s a good side. We ground out a win.
"It’s funny, if you were watching a Premier League team, if it’s Manchester City at Sunderland the other night, who scored and then got battered, everybody would be saying, ‘Well, if you can win when you play like that, if you can eke out a win’. That’s just what it’s about, it’s about winning games’.
"We’ve got 17 left, they’re ticking away and I’m not bothered how we play really. Win. We want to play well, we want to entertain people, it would be lovely if we did, but the more the games go, the less likely that’s going to be from all of us.
"I would imagine Derby, who are one of the best football teams I’ve seen down here, and Middlesbrough would settle for a scrappy 1-0 win somewhere along the line.”
The Town boss says he remains level-headed whatever the result or situation: "I would hope that I’m consistent. I come in here if we’ve won, lost or drawn, even after the games I try to be at a consistent level.
"And I think that’s the only way you can survive in this game [rather than being] up here when you’ve won and down here when anybody says anything about you.
"I can’t say it doesn’t irk me or hurt me but it’s how you deal with it afterwards. I might think ‘I didn’t like that’ but then I think ‘F*** it, it’s been said, so what?’.
"Just get on in spite of what everybody else says about me and the team, that is just what it’s about.
"I was told once by a great man, ‘Do it in spite of everybody’, which was a little bit strong, I suppose, but I did. And I still am.”
QPR have won just once in the league since Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink took over on December 4th, seven of their Championship games having ended in draws, with the Portman Road loss one of only two league defeats. Their last home win was against Leeds on November 28th.
Relegated from the Premier League last season, Rangers are 13th, 12 points behind the Blues in the final play-off place.
McCarthy says Saturday’s match is the sort of fixture the West Londoners will need to win if they are to drag themselves into contention.
"It’s their home game and it’s one of those stadiums,” he added. "It’s tight, the pitch always seems smaller than it probably is.
"But they’re right on top of you and it’s a tough place to play. But, if you’re playing well as the away side it can be tough for the home team as well."""I liked to play there, I liked to play at them all, everywhere. I didn’t mind. I’ve played, good, bad and indifferent on most of them. But it didn’t bother me where we played.”
Town have sold out their allocation of tickets and McCarthy had praise for the travelling Blue Army.
"Our support in and around our local derbies between 80 and 100 miles away at Fulham, Watford last year, Charlton, MK Dons seems to be brilliant,” he said. "Our away support has been fantastic. Birmingham was brilliant as well.”
Bartosz Bialkowski will again be in goal with Dean Gerken out with his shoulder injury until the Hull City game towards the end of the month.
Skipper Luke Chambers will be at right-back, Jonas Knudsen left-back and Tommy Smith and Christophe Berra at the centre of the defence.
Town - who will be wearing their Barcelona-esque second strip for only the second time - will probably start in the 4-3-3 formation they reverted to against the Royals with Cole Skuse and Luke Hyam in the deeper midfield roles and Kevin Bru ahead of them.
Up front, despite Pitman and Varney pushing for starts, the system is more suited to Daryl Murphy playing in the centre with Ryan Fraser on the left and Freddie Sears on the right, and the duo are again likely to come off the bench in the second half.
For QPR, Dutch striker Abdenasser El Khayati, signed from Hasselbaink’s old club Burton Albion on deadline day, could come into the squad, while midfielder Leroy Fer departed for Swansea.
Young defender Cole Kpekawa has returned from a loan spell with Leyton Orient, while left-back Jack Robinson is available after almost a year out with a knee injury.
Hasselbaink will be looking for his side to extend their recent run of going four games without defeat, one win and three draws.
"We are confident, we are always confident," he told the QPR official site. "You have to be. We have had four good games where in a couple we have done really, really well, especially in the first halves. We have to build on that.
"We have to take the right things from those games, and do it for longer periods. I want us to put our opposition under pressure more. That is what I want to see.”
Travelling to QPR? Information for away fans can be found here: https://t.co/OFUOpdS0VD#followthetown– ITFC Supporters Club (@ITSCofficial) February 5, 2016
The Dutchman says he knows what to expect from Town: "They put people under pressure, they are right in your face and they ask you questions. They go for it, and you have to prepare yourself for that, and compete.
"Ipswich play how they play, the don’t change that much. And that is one of their strengths because they all know what they are doing.
"We know how they are going to approach the game, but it is about us and how we approach the game. We have to work on what makes us strong, try to take the game to them and put them under pressure with good, attractive football.”
Town have won 29 of the previous encounters between the sides (27 in the league), Rangers 25 (23) and 18 (17) have ended in draws.
On Boxing Day at Portman Road, skipper Luke Chambers headed home an injury time winner as Town came from behind to win 2-1.
Junior Hoilett put the visitors in front in first-half injury time but Jonathan Douglas levelled on 77 before Chambers’s dramatic last-gasp winner.
Last time the teams met at Loftus Road, in August 2013 at the start of the West Londoners’ promotion season, debutant sub Tom Hitchcock scored in the final minute to consign the Blues to a 1-0 defeat.
Town had gone close to going in front before the break when Green saved from Daryl Murphy, but it was all Rangers in the second half with Clint Hill and Charlie Austin both hitting the bar prior to Hitchcock’s last-gasp goal.
Jay Emmanuel-Thomas joined Rangers after being released by Bristol City in the summer, but having been out of favour since Hasselbaink took over as boss moved to the MK Dons on loan on Monday.
The former Arsenal youngster made 43 starts and 32 sub appearances for the Blues, scoring nine goals, between July 2011 and July 2013.
Australian international midfielder Massimo Luongo joined Town on loan from Spurs in the summer of 2012 and made eight starts and three sub appearances, scoring once, before McCarthy curtailed his spell at Portman Road shortly after taking over.
Town midfielder Giles Coke was with QPR as a youth player, while Blues U21 coach Mark Kennedy was on loan with the Rs for just over a month in 1998, scoring twice in eight games.
LU confirms cancellation of this weekend's RMT Tube strike - for more information click here: https://t.co/5clxu3Vpfo– Transport for London (@TfL) February 5, 2016
Fans planning to travel by train should note that there is engineering work between Ipswich and London over the weekend, but the 48-hour Tube strike due to start on Saturday evening has been called off.
Saturday’s referee is Charles Breakspear from Surrey, who has shown 107 yellow cards and two red in 25 games so far this season.
Breakspear’s last Town match was the 0-0 home draw with Wigan in January last year in which he booked Tommy Smith and three Latics.
Prior to that he was in charge of the 1-0 home victory over Bolton in February 2014, the winning goal a 55th minute David McGoldrick penalty awarded after the striker had been hauled back by Trotters’ keeper Andy Lonergan, who had dropped a high ball.
Aside from those two Championship games, Breakspear, who will be refereeing QPR for the first time, also took control of Town’s 3-0 pre-season friendly victory at Colchester in July 2013 in which he also awarded a penalty, which Daryl Murphy scored after he was fouled by U’s keeper Sam Walker.
Squad from: Bialkowski, Henly, Chambers (c), Knudsen, Foley, Berra, Smith, Malarczyk, Skuse, Hyam, Coke, Tabb, Bru, Maitland-Niles, Fraser, Touré, Sears, Pitman, Murphy, Varney.