Town boss Paul Cook wants his side to play attacking football with the full-backs “bombing on”, but says they will have to be adaptable and patient during the season ahead as they face teams who may look to park the bus and frustrate them.
At Monday evening’s PLC EGM, Cook was asked about his approach to the game, the questioner having said he didn’t want to see the ball being slowly passed around between the team’s back four in their own half of the field as was so often the case under former manager Paul Lambert.
Cook, who last week reiterated that 4-2-3-1 is his preferred system but says he may have to move to two up front at times, outlined his philosophy.
"I think in boxing they say styles make a good fight and I think the importance for us is that when teams do come and defend deep it can get frustrating,” he said.
"The reality for us is that we want to engage in and open football match with everyone. That’s what we want to do.
"We want to press every team, but you can’t press teams who don’t want to play out, for example.
"So we’ve got to really be adaptable. The reality for us is that we’re going to play with full-backs bombing on all the time.
"We’ll defend with a little box, our two central midfielders and our centre-halves, everyone else is going to attack.
"But at times we have to be patient. That’s just part and parcel of the game, especially if teams defend deep.
"The brutal truth is that we want to play attacking football, but to do that sometimes you’ve got to have an opposition that want to engage with you in the same game.
"If someone’s going to set up with what we call the low block nowadays in modern football, but basically means park the bus, it can be very difficult because the best way to beat teams that park the bus is a diagonal ball to a big striker who heads it down for a little striker to come in and score.
"And that’s what we’ve got to try and work on. We’ve got to be able to adapt to the way different teams come here.
"When I started off managing, I only wanted teams to play the way I wanted to watch football. That’s certainly not passing sideways and back and boring the life out of everyone, so hopefully I can deliver that for you.”
He added: "My view of watching football is that you get your flair players the ball and trust your flair players to produce.
"The reality over the years, Ipswich Town have had some very, very good flair players, probably over the last year or two our better flair players haven’t been the ones we’ve been getting the ball to.
"Now this year I feel bringing players to the club that when we do get them the ball, they will produce for us.”