Town striker Brett Pitman is in danger of being tagged a super-sub — but it’s not a label he wants to wear.
The former Bournemouth player, in his first season at Portman Road, is the club’s leading marksman with nine goals and his two most recent, in the 2-1 home wins over Leeds and Reading, came after coming off the bench.
But Pitman, 28, admitted: "I definitely do not want to be known as a super-sub. It’s something that I hope doesn’t stick.
"I think I should be playing, like everybody else in the squad probably thinks they should be playing. That’s how it is and if I’m not playing I won’t be happy but I’ll be ready if I’m called upon.”
His late clinchers against Leeds and Reading, worth an additional four points, earned him a starting place against QPR last week and despite finishing on the losing side at Loftus Road the Jersey-born player felt he acquitted himself reasonably well.
Pitman added: "I thought I did alright to be honest but it doesn’t really matter when you’ve been beaten. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve played well or not — it’s just very frustrating to lose.
"We probably didn’t do ourselves justice, especially in the first half, but in the second half I thought we had enough chances to take something from the game.”
Losing to Matt Phillips’s 88th minute header was bad enough but Pitman’s former Cherries’ team-mate Ryan Fraser, on a season-long loan with Town, also sustained a hamstring injury that is going to keep him out of action for a minimum of six weeks.
Pitman said: "It looked bad at the time but we obviously had to wait for the results of the scan to come through.
"We will obviously miss him because he offers something different to anyone else in the squad but we are just going to have to cope without him.
"We coped the last time Ryan was out injured so we need to do it again. Ryan’s a strong character and will be okay.
"He’ll go back to Bournemouth and have his treatment so by the time we see him back here again he’ll be raring to go. He’s a bubbly lad so he’ll be alright — but we’ll certainly miss him.”
Town are currently seventh in the table, bidding to at least emulate last season’s feat of qualifying for the play-offs, but with eight points separating them from second-top Hull — visitors to Portman Road on Tuesday week, Pitman was asked if he felt the top two were out of reach.
He replied: "Mathematically they’re not but it’s going to be tough. There are a lot of good teams in between us and the top two so it will be difficult to achieve automatic promotion — but you never know.”