Cole Skuse admits that he and his Town colleagues must accept a massive part of the responsibility for last week’s below-par display in the disappointing goalless draw with rock-bottom Burton at Portman Road.
Town head for Carrow Road on Sunday for the latest chapter of the long-running East Anglian derby saga looking to bounce back from what manager Mick McCarthy labelled his team’s worst display of the season so far.
Few supporters present at the 0-0 stalemate would argue with that and McCarthy felt the full force of many fans’ frustration both during and at the end of last Saturday’s game, only a Man of the Match performance from goalkeeper Bartosz Bialkowski preventing the added humiliation of a defeat.
Skuse, who has clocked up 196 first team appearances since his arrival on a free transfer in 2013, said: "As players we take a massive part of the responsibility. The manager doesn’t relay to us in the dressing room beforehand or at half-time ‘Look, you’ve got to go out and play this poorly’.
"He’s given us instructions to go out and perform and we didn’t on the day, so we’ve got to hold our hands up.
"We knew that coming off the pitch, at half-time and again at full-time. It wasn’t good enough and we had in-house chats after the game and we’ve had them again this week in the lead-up to Sunday, when we will be looking to make amends.
"Before Burton I think we had a run of decent performances without getting big results. In any walk of life people have off days and bad days, and that was one of them for us.
"It was one of those days when it didn’t gel, didn’t click and what we were trying to do didn’t work. We came off the pitch knowing that the fans went away thinking the same, so we’ll be looking to make amends this weekend.”
Asked how he felt McCarthy coped with the flak, Skuse added: "Everyone is different when it comes to handling different things. The gaffer does it his way and you’ve got to give him credit for the way he handles it.
"He doesn’t change the way he is, never getting too carried away with the highs and certainly not getting down when we have our lows.
"He’s very much on a plateau and deals with everything the same way. We need to take a huge chunk of the responsibility for the Burton performance because we were nowhere near good enough as players.
"Going into what is arguably our biggest game of the season — the derby with Norwich is huge for everyone — off the back of that performance could be alarming.
"But we’re using it as a bit of an incentive really. There’s no way we want to be that bad again live on television and against our biggest rivals. We’re looking to put things right and have a big performance at the weekend.
"We need to give our fans a carrot to get behind us. You can’t expect to put on performances like we did against Burton and expect to get olés and be cheered off the pitch. That doesn’t happen in any football stadium.
"We need to put on performances that excite fans and bring them back week in, week out. We know we’ve got to do better than last weekend.
"It’s tough when the supporters are on your back. I mean, who wants that? I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be walking down the street and people booing you and telling you that what you are doing isn’t good enough. It isn’t nice but it’s something you have to deal with in football.
"It’s something the players need to get used to it because it can soon happen in a football environment. Only we can make amends and put it right. It’s just down to us to turn in better performances.
"It could be better that we’re away from home. When we played them at home earlier in the season I thought we put in a good performance and should have got something from the game.
"But the atmosphere that our fans generate away from home is always fantastic and we’ll be looking to put on a good display for them.”