Town forward Sone Aluko has revealed that he, skipper Sam Morsy and other senior players sought to instil a squad culture at Portman Road after the summer of change at the club.
Aluko was one of 19 new additions in the close season as almost 30 players, including most of the established senior players, moved on.
The 33-year-old has been one of the Blues’ standout performers this season, seemingly settling into the club comfortably, however, he says it wasn’t as easy as it might have appeared.
"It’s been trickier than maybe it’s looked from the outside,” he told TWTD. "It wasn’t easy to come and settle here. Everyone was new, all the players were new, there wasn’t like a set culture here and obviously I’m the oldest player.
"What is Ipswich Town going to be as a squad of players? Me, Sam Morsy and some of the other senior players, we spoke a lot, we texted a lot about how were going to turn this from potential at the club we think it can be, from a squad point of view. So it’s not been easy.
"And then in my very first game in the Carabao Cup I got injured, so then I missed the next four or five games, so then your fitness drops straight away because you’ve not got a lot of match fitness from pre-season. The initial transition was tricky, so I’m glad it’s looked easier from the outside.”
He says establishing cohesion within the squad was vitally important: "I think that was naturally what was going to be missing. You usually join a club and you’re one of maybe two or three new players each window. I think I was the 12th or 13th signing and then there were 19 in total.
"So there was just no squad culture. Everyone was new, everyone was learning about each other’s personalities, learning about what people want from the game, their desires.
"What I and what a 21-year-old want from the game are very different, so it was how we were going to bring all that together.
"And then obviously everyone wants to play. When you come to a club and you’re a new signing, you want to play regularly, you want to show the management what you can do, but when there are 19 signings, that can’t happen for everyone, so it’s just keeping everyone on board, keeping everyone in the same direction.
"And I think that as a squad we’ve done a really good job of that, keeping everyone together because it can fracture very easily.”
Looking back, the Blues’ slow start to the campaign was perhaps an illustration of that missing squad culture.
"It showed in the early days with our results,” he continued. "We’d score a goal and then we’d concede a goal straight afterwards or we’d be up in games and lose a game, then we didn’t win for a while.
"The cohesion wasn’t there and the club must have known that with signing all those players it wasn’t going to click straight away.”
The Covid situation didn’t make matters any easier as the new players got to know one another: "It makes everything trickier, for sure.”
Despite results not always having been what was hoped for in the early stages of the season, the incoming players still forged strong relationships with the Portman Road crowd.
Aluko says Town fans have been terrific all season: "Since I’ve been here, the fans have been incredible. That’s the other thing I’ve noticed. I’ve been at big clubs before, I played at Rangers and the fanbase there is incredible, but after that, this could be the next most impressive.
"The last away game [at MK Dons] there were 7,000 away fans and they really come and make noise. It’s humbling to play for a club of this size.
"You really have to say, ‘OK, people are spending hard-earned money, they’re travelling up and down the country to follow us, we have to give them something to really be proud of’.”