Blues boss Mick McCarthy is well aware that fans across the country will be keeping an eye on this afternoon’s FA Cup third round tie against Vanarama National League leaders Lincoln City hoping for one of the competition’s traditional giantkillings. However, he doesn’t feel his players will be under any additional pressure.
Town's only FA Cup defeat to a non-league side since they became a league club in 1938 came back in January 1960 when they lost 3-2 at home to Peterborough United in the third round.
"I would imagine all of them [will be looking at the game as a potential shock],” reflected McCarthy, who plans to name a strong team today to reduce the chances of an upset. "It’s never been any different, that’s not going to change.
"I’ve no problem with that at all. It’s down to us in the building here to make sure we do it properly and we win the game.”
Does that add any pressure? "Not really because we’ve been under enough pressure at home. We’ve put it on ourselves, we’ve not played well enough, we’ve not won games, although we did win the last game at home [2-1 against Bristol City] and played well.
"I don’t see it as any more pressure, not at all. I see it as a game we’ve got to win, but if we were playing Blackburn here, if it was that game, I wouldn’t see it any more than that.”
McCarthy says there were plenty of positives in the performances against the Robins and also at QPR on Monday, despite that game ultimately ending in a 2-1 defeat.
"I was pleased with the way we played and everybody connected with Ipswich was pleased with the way we played until the second goal went in and all of a sudden it’s like we didn’t play well at all, which is nonsense,” he added.
"I’ve just watched it again this morning. It was a really good performance. I said we should have got something out of it but you’ve got to take your chances when you get them and we can’t give silly goals away.”
The Town boss says he would be happy enough if his team replicated those displays from now until the end of the season.
"You can only really take care of performances,” he continued. "You can’t do anything about the result before the game, you can prepare and make sure you play well and I think the last two performances have been good and I would accept that and, although it hurt on Monday, losing that game, I can accept it if we’ve played well, far more easily than if we haven’t.”
Coming back to this afternoon’s match, he says it’ll be down to the Blues whether fans across the country will have got the cup shock they will be craving.
"It really will be down to us, it’ll be about how we played, about our performance, not about anybody else," he added. "It’ll be about how we take care of it.”