Manager Paul Cook says the Blues players to “step up to the plate a lot more than they have been doing” if they want to stay at the club ahead of what he believes will be exciting times under the Blues new ownership.
Asked about the mood among the squad at the present time, whether they’re feeling edgy and a bit of pressure, Cook said: "I don’t think they feel the pressure, I’ve got to tell you. I think we do what it says on the tin. We’re very honest, we’re organised, we’re committed, we lack quality going forward, we’re desperate for lads to step up to the plate.
"For these players today, being out of contract will affect some of them, and rightly so. New ownership’s coming in, it will be exciting times in terms of investment into the team, players coming in.
"What I crave for is some of our players who are here now to step up to the plate a lot more than you have been doing because if you want to be here, we need to see more.”
Cook says no one’s approached him to talk about their contract situation with 20 players having their terms coming to an end this summer with seven young players already having been told they can move on.
"No, not really,” he said. "As you can imagine, I try and be as honest as I can with you guys, and I give the same honesty with them in the players’ dressing rooms, changing rooms.
"When you want to be successful, as you know yourselves, you’ve got to work hard and you’ve got to sacrifice and you’ve got to do a lot.
"What you see on a Saturday afternoon is only the stage performance of what people have rehearsed and practised.
"Some of the stuff I’ve seen behind the scenes, the training loads, the output of players on the football pitch and stuff, we’re off the pace. We hold our hands up, and I’m involved in that as manager of this club, we’re off the pace.
"Going forward we demand more. And that will be a demand from the players that comes to myself and the staff because we have to be better.
"Any questions you want to ask me now, lads, I can’t really answer. I’ve been as honest enough as I can be, I have a burning desire to be in the play-offs and the players have got to have the same ambitions and desires as well.
"If not, then the reality is that the season will peter out. We’ll all be left with a tinge of ‘I thought Paul Cook would have done better’. Paul Cook would have thought someone else would have done better and that pass the parcel of blame will go on.
"I don’t live in those blame cultures, me. I believe that we have to deliver and that’s my way.”
Can you put your finger on why Town aren’t scoring enough goals? "I’m not going to discuss it greatly because if you go into the goals scored column for the season, I think we’re third-bottom, aren’t we?
"You’re going to get into a problem that’s been here for a long time. The reality is then, for a manager, you want to start throwing players under the bus. I don’t work like that. The reality is that free-scoring teams score goals regularly, teams that don’t, don’t.
"You look at systems we’ve played this year, we’re probably one of the clubs in the division that have probably played every system you can play in football in pursuit of trying to gain success. Eventually, it comes down to calibre of player in your football club.”
Asked whether he’s surprised at how difficult it has been since he came in, Cook wasn’t keen to get into the discussion.
"Again, you’re going to take me to places I just don’t want to go because you’re going to get me to criticise the players, which I will not do,” he said.
"As a football club, when you play for top clubs, you either deliver or you leave. There is no other apartment available, there’s no other platform.
"For us going forward, we’ve got to be careful now because our players get told continually that they’re not good enough, that they don’t deliver. I would imagine if the lads are on social media, they’ll probably come off social media because the criticism they get.
"We have the same press conference every week and speak about the same problems every week.
"That’s why I haven’t done press a couple of times because I’d be speaking about the same problems.
"Hopefully we can cure it, we can go and win a couple of games, if that’s 1-0, so be it. But as a manager you’ve got to focus on the team, how can we improve.
"Can I help the team? At the minute the team is very, very solid, very, very well-organised and disciplined defensively but going forward it’s lacking creativity, lacking quality and lacking numbers in the box. I hope that’s nearly answered your question!”
The best way to instil some positivity is to get a couple of wins. "Again, we’re just going over the same ground. We’ve got seven games to go. If we were to win a number of games we’d be in the play-offs. If we could win a play-off semi-final, we’d possibly be playing at Wembley in front of some Ipswich Town fans.
"I don’t know how you feel about that, but I’m actually getting little goose pimples on my arms thinking about it. So why not?”
He added: "What do we all think we can learn about our players tomorrow evening that we don’t already know?
"You’re looking for me to be some sort of absolute magician, but I’m not. But the truth is that we’ve been away to Blackpool and won, we’ve been away to Hull and won, we’ve have strong performances at home. We’ve had really good performances when people didn’t think we would.
"At the minute, if you look at the last few games, Rochdale, Wigan and MK Dons, by drawing games, if any of those games had been a 1-0 victory to Ipswich, the margin for success would have been greater.
"And they’re the small margins I’m trying to change as a manager. I can’t make wholesale changes to make us better. But I’ve got to stick with the plan that we are what we are, but within being what we are, can we be successful at what we are. That’s the big challenge for me and the staff.”
While the Blues are third from bottom in a goals scored League One table, 41, at the other end only four sides have conceded fewer than the 38 shipped by Town.
But that’s not much of a consolation to Cook: "Not really because I like my teams to attack! I like chances, I like fans to enjoy watching the team get numbers forward.
"You’re getting involved in debates about full-backs. There’s no time for those debates. We’ve got Luke Woolfenden playing in a right-back/right-sided position and he’s a centre-half, and he’s doing great in the functioning of the team.
"Is that what we want going forward? Not a prayer. Not a chance. Is it making us solid at the minute? Yes, it is. So we’ve got to keep believing in what we’re doing, albeit if you’re looking at one television programme today, it’s not the one we’ll be watching tomorrow, 100 per cent.”