With manager Paul Cook’s nine-month reign ended at the weekend skipper Sam Morsy is anxious to give interim boss John McGreal a winning start when he takes charge for the first time at Charlton tomorrow evening.
A new era commences under the former Blues defender who cut his managerial teeth in a four-year spell along the A12 at Colchester, where he won 76 of his 204 games in charge, and he was introduced to the players at training this morning.
Asked for his first impressions of Birkenhead-born McGreal, who started his playing career with his local club, Tranmere Rovers, Morsy said: "He met the squad today. He’s an Ipswich lad, really keen to get some wins, really enthusiastic and he’s told us how he wants us to play.
"He wants everyone to be a little bit free really — those are his words. He wants everyone to enjoy it and he wants us to give the fans something to be proud of. He lives locally and he wants to get the enthusiasm back in the team.”
How are the other players coping with Cook’s departure as he brought most of them to the club in the summer? Morsy added: "Everyone was shocked and we’ve had our meetings about what’s expected over the next sort of couple of days. It’s one of those — we have to clear our heads, prepare for Charlton and try to get a win really.
"The support has been really, really good but I think the atmosphere wasn’t great Saturday. A few boos in the crowd, things like that, which is never nice to hear really, especially when the lads are 100 per cent committed to the cause.
"The fans had become a little bit impatient but we know they are going to be travelling in their numbers and we know how much they support us. We have to give them something to shout about really and try to get them to fully believe in the team.
"The manager going is massively disappointing for me because he was the reason I came here and he was the reason most of us came to be honest.
"But while it’s really disappointing I’ve been in this position as a player before and it’s never nice. We just have to regroup and go again, and make sure come Tuesday night we’re energetic and we’re ready to go.”
Cook’s coaching staff, all four of whom have also left Portman Road, came in for some criticism from supporters, mainly because of their lack of experience in the role and, if they had coached elsewhere before, it wasn’t at senior level.
Morsy said: "It’s not been fair but it’s what happens. They tried really hard, they put on good sessions and they’ve been close to the lads, everything you could have asked for really.
"Unfortunately, in football you’re always looking for a scapegoat, you’re always looking for ‘yes, that’s the reason’.
"It’s never simple and it’s never just one thing why you’re a success or you’re a failure. But it’s an easy thing to do, isn’t it, because of the inexperience of first team level coaching? They were great, as good as what I’ve worked with, but people have opinions and that’s the way it goes.
"If we were doing better people would be saying how good they are. That’s just football, the nature of it, but again they’re really good guys and that’s why we’ve let them down a little bit to be fair.
"Not for lack of effort, not for lack of commitment, it’s just that in this industry it’s cut-throat, isn’t it? It’s results-based.
"You look at how well we played against Sunderland and we ended up losing 2-0. If we’d won that game…it’s like I said, because of the way we started our season’s been on a knife-edge.
"Oxford and Sunderland, if we’d beaten both of them, which we should have done by the way, we’d be in a completely different situation now. Like I said, the owners have put a lot of money in and they want immediate success, they want success this season and decided to make their decision.”
Asked how unsettling it can be for players when a new manager comes in, Morsy continued: "I think you just have to focus really and try to clear your head, not over-think anything.
"For the new guy, whoever that is, you just have to give your all and that’s all you can do as a professional footballer.
"All I can do is give my all on a daily basis and on Saturday, Tuesday. That’s it, whatever happens is out of my control.
"I think sometimes as footballers we can sort of get a bit ahead of ourselves and start thinking about the future and whatever, but the reality is that you have to stay in the present.
"For someone like me, the message I’ll be giving to the lads is to take it one day at a time. You just have to zoom in, one day at a time, prepare today, prepare tomorrow, play the game.
"We don’t know what’s going to happen and we never know what’s around the corner in football, like who’s going to be the new manager, the style, what personnel he likes?
"All these things are completely out of our control, so the best way you can be and the most focused you can be is just doing your job, just doing the really simple things. Prepare for the game like you would, prepare to play and the rest will take care of itself.”