Boss Paul Lambert has outlined the basis on which he plans to rebuild the Blues with relegation now appearing certain following last week’s 2-1 defeat to Reading, which left Town 12 points from safety with only 11 games left to play, believing the club needs to be “cleansed”.
Lambert concedes that last week’s failure to take even a draw from what was a vital six-pointer was a huge blow to the Blues’ hopes of remaining in the Championship with results not having matched performances for much of the time since he took charge in October.
"Where you do get frustration is that you’re playing well and you’ve a better chance of winning when you’re playing well rather than with you backs to the wall every week and you’re just playing long ball football and football that’s alien to what I want to play because long term it will benefit the club,” he said.
"I think that’s important. Whatever happens this season, the club needs to be cleaned, without a doubt it needs [to be] cleansed. And I think we’ll see what happens in the summer.”
Does that imply there will be a lot of exits in the close season? "You’ve got six loans right away. Nobody knows what’s happening with those lads because obviously they’re not our players, they go back those guys.
"Some lads are out of contract as well. They might be waiting to see what happens, things like that.
"You don’t need to be Einstein to sit back and think there’ll probably be one or two changes.”
He says he has already begun to put in place his plans for next season, which will almost certainly be Town’s first in the third tier for 62 years.
"We’ve already started bits here and there,” he continued. "In a couple of months you’ll know exactly what’s going to happen. That’s all I can really say, in a couple of months’ time you’ll all know exactly what’s going to happen.
"I think it’ll be exciting, I think the club will be in a lot better place if there’s a strategy and a plan and everybody buys into it, and let’s see where it goes.”
He added: "I know exactly where you think you can try and help it, you can try and make it right. I know exactly where I think it went wrong with certain things.
"There’s no right way and wrong way in football, there’s no right way and wrong way to play football, there’s no right way or wrong way to make it right, it’s just my way, that’s what I’m saying. I’m not saying it’s the [only] right [way], you could be sitting talking to somebody else who will have a different view on it.
"There’s not a right way or a wrong way, that’s why you respect everybody’s opinion, but my way is hopefully going to be the right one.”
Is he guiding owner Marcus Evans? "He’s been brilliant, he’s been absolutely brilliant. I wouldn’t like to think what the owner has put into this club money-wise, and it’s his own money and it’s sitting where it is. So something tells you something’s not quite working.
"I can’t ask any more from Marcus Evans as in support or dialogue or anything like that. He’s the custodian of the club, the club needs him as I’ve always said, he’s really great with me since I’ve been in and one thing I don’t want to do is him keep losing money, money and money and more money and the club sinking and sinking.
"It’s not right, something’s got to stop and I get on really well with him on that. I’ll say things to him that I think are right, I don’t hide behind things, you can probably guess my personality.
"But I’m doing it for the good of the club, not for the sake of me or for the staff that I’ve brought in, it’s for the good of the club and I don’t want to see it drift.”
Asked whether he feels it’s still too early to field youngsters in order to gain them experience for next season, he points out that a number have been in and around the squad throughout his time at the club.
"I’ve chucked in Dozzell, Downes, Bishop, Lankester, I threw them in when we first came in,” he said.
"So if I think they’re ready for it, it doesn’t matter to me which stage of the season we’re at, I’ll throw them in because they’re the future of the club and the club will hopefully go that way.
"You’ll get everything out of them, you’ve got enthusiasm, you’ll get endeavour, you’ll get ability, you’ll get determination, you’ll get young legs that can get around the pitch. You’ll have all that anyway.
"It doesn’t matter to me whether it was we came in in November or now, if I think they’re ready I will throw them in.”
While Town have sat rock bottom for most of the season and need a miracle to survive, they have rarely been thrashed, as is usually the case with sides cut adrift at the bottom of the table.
"It’s not just that, but we’re actually playing well enough to win games,” Lambert insisted. "I thought we should have been two or three-up at Wigan.
"I can go through them all with you. Against Bristol City we were dominant and we ended up losing due to mistakes.
"Millwall, we were dominant, a helluva lot of games we’ve been the best team and we’ve not walked away with any results or a draw here and there. It’s not been for a lack of trying because the way we’ve been playing has been really pleasing.
"Even against West Brom, one of the early games, we were well in the game against a team that’s just been relegated from the Premier League.
"But it’s both ends, either box. The club definitely needs to cleanse itself and if we can do it right, it’ll certainly help it.”
Would he have done anything differently? "You’re never satisfied whether you’re winning or losing. Just because you’ve won a few games, I don’t think you ever say you’ve arrived, you think you’re great.
"I never do that. I never did that as a player and I’ve never done it as a manager because the most important people at any football club are the players and the supporters, always will be.
"Without those two components you don’t have a game. We’re here to help them and to try and make them better players and better people to try and perform at the highest level.
"I never sit back and think after we’ve won a game or drawn a game, ‘This is great because I got the result’. No, not at all. I always try and think that we strive to be the best we can and if we can do that, then great.”
Lambert has generated a lot of goodwill during his months at the club, something he wants to maintain over the final games of this season and take into the summer and then the new campaign.
"You’re 100 per cent right,” he added. "That’s one thing I can ask for is to keep that feeling that’s here and I think in the next few months things will become clear to everybody.
"I think you guys [the media], everybody at the club, I think there’s a really good, strong future at the club because you’ve got some really good young players here and ones coming through but they need a little bit of time and patience and a strategy. But things will become clear in the next few months.
"And the support, as I’ve said before, they will be there because it’s a fabulous support that we’ve got.”
Was his appointment as much about future seasons as it was about trying to prevent relegation?
"You’re better asking Marcus that question,” he continued. "Whatever happens at the end of the season, it’s an absolutely brilliant club. I love being here, I think it’s a great, great club, it can potentially be anything it wants.
"The fanbase its got behind it, I keep referring to it, the history behind the club, the people that actually support the club, there’s one team in the town, but if you don’t pull it together, it’s always going to drift and I don’t want it to drift, I want it to have a philosophy here where the whole football club plays the same way.
"And there’s what I said about the community because you lose a generation of supporters which you should never lose.
"You’ve got to try and get back into the schools to get the young ones back in as well, I think that’s important.
"I think it needs to be reviewed, everything. It can’t keep doing what it’s doing because it does eventually catch you.
"We’ve come in at a time when [it has caught the club up] but I know the bigger picture, the way I can see it or envision it, and I think Marcus is really on it, [general manager of football operations] Lee [O’Neill]’s really on it.
"I’m pretty sure if you ask anybody there’s probably been mistakes made and it’s up to us to try and help it.”
If the Blues are relegated budgets will inevitably be cut with the club set to lose £7 million in media money, without taking into account any reduction in income from other routes. Town’s wage bill last season was £18.5 million and Lambert concedes it wouldn’t be anywhere near that in League One and that the club has to find a new approach.
"Quite right, it’s impossible,” he said. "Marcus has put how many millions over his 12 years? If I said to you to put £100 million into the club and have nothing to show for it, something’s got to change somewhere.
"It has to, it can’t keep doing what it’s doing or else there is no Ipswich Town. I don’t want that, nobody wants that.
"OK, if it never worked doing it his way, let’s try another way. We’ve got the good really young guys here, good young players here, we need to have a strategy and a plan going forward long term, ‘This is the way we’re going to go’.
"Nobody can point the finger at the owner and say, ‘What have you done?’. ‘I’ve put in a hundred million or so’. Dear oh dear.”
While it may be the case that Evans has injected an average of around £6 million a season in his just over 11 years at Portman Road, taking the debt - which is almost entirely owed to him - from £36 million to £95.5 million at the end of the financial year to June 2018, his investment is dwarfed by the cash made available at the clubs at the top of the division. That £18.5 million wage bill was around the 18th highest in the division.
"What has he got to show for [his investment]?” Lambert asked. "When you have an academy with young players, but you have to hold your nerve and you have to have a plan where you say this is what we do off the pitch, this is the philosophy off the pitch for the club, for the supporters, for the season tickets, for the interaction with the schools, the community, there has to be some plan for the club to stop failing, there’s got to be.
"My idea, which I’ve already relayed to Marcus and Lee, I think will definitely benefit the whole club. If everybody buys into it then it could be really exciting, really exciting.
"It can’t keep doing what it’s doing and that’s why I always say when you have loan players, for example, and you’re spending money on loan players and the lads go back, you need to do it all again.
"You have your decent U23s or decent U18s, five or six guys in the first team at the minute, so what do you do, do you say they’re not good enough? Turn around to Bishop and Dozzell and Lankester and Kenlock and say, ‘Listen, I’m going to bring in somebody from Galatasaray, Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich or wherever’.
"That’s a balancing act for me. A strategy going forward and the club will be a million times better place for it.
"Because the support is there for it and the support drives the club. But we have to reach out to them, without a doubt you have to reach out to the supporters.”
The academy being central to his plans going forward, might it be protected from the cuts which are likely to come in the summer? "That side of it, I don’t know. If you fail, normally things happen, people may be lost here or lost there, that’s normal, it doesn’t matter what club you’re at, that’s normal.
"But you’ve still got to have a structure where the young players come through and, as I said before, there are good young ones here, really good young ones.
"You need one or two experienced ones to help them along the way but there are some really ones here, six of them are playing in the first team at the minute, this season will do them the world of good. They might not think it at the minute but believe me it will, it’ll do them the world of good.”