Portsmouth manager Danny Cowley believes Pompey can’t compete with Town off the pitch but his side showed that they can on the field during this afternoon’s 0-0 draw at Portman Road.
"A really hard-fought, well-earned point against a super-heavyweight of the division,” Cowley said.
"I think it’s very difficult for us to compete with them off the pitch, you’ve only got to look at their squad, the players on their bench and the players not even in their squad.
"But we can compete with them on the pitch and we can certainly compete with them in the stands because I thought our supporters, I don’t know how many was here, maybe 30,000 and maybe only 2,000 Portsmouth supporters, but they were incredible today.
"An unbelievable noise and unbelievable support for a group I think that they see are giving everything.
"We’ve got 13 fit senior players, senior outfield players and for us to have played in this run of games, Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday and still be eight unbeaten with six wins is testament to the group, to their togetherness, to their spirit and their willingness to run hard for each other.”
He added: "If you’re going to come to a team like Ipswich with the players that they have, and they’re very well coached as well, they’ve been improved significantly as the season’s gone on and I think that that shows in their results, you’re going to have to come and like always away from home, you’re going to have to enjoy defending at times and you know that if you defend well, then moments will become available on the counter-attack.
"I think we had the best chance of the game but we just weren’t able to take it, maybe we’ve taken it in recent games. Then we had other moments as well.
"We felt that if we could get to maybe 70/75 minutes then we would have a chance to push on and try to win the game but, to be fair to the players, I just think our energy reserves didn’t allow us to do that and that’s to be expected when you are where we’re at.”
Reflecting on Town’s system, he added: "Ipswich play a 3-4-3, which can become a 4-2-3-1, they play a hybrid of the two, they like a box in midfield, they love to play through you. They ask a lot of questions of your defensive organisation.
"Don’t forget, we won the ball eight times in the first half high up the pitch that led to good chances. In that first-half period we had eight turnovers against them, which I thought was going to be a good way of us scoring.
"Like I said, there’s a lot to respect in the Ipswich team and I think for us it’s a well-deserved point.”
Cowley’s comments suggest he believes the Blues are going in only one direction: "Absolutely, you’ve just got to look at them as a football club, look at their U23s. Look at them as a club, look at their 18s, look at their U23s, their U23s I think beat Charlton 5-1 last week.
"There are some really good players in that group, players like young [Elkan] Baggott, left-sided centre-half.
"And that’s before we get to their first-team players. What we’d do to have one, two, three, four of them coming through.
"We’re not quite there yet, we’re at a different stage in our journey, but that’s what I mean when I talk about not being able to compete with them off the pitch. I don’t think many clubs in League One can, so as not to take the quote out of context.
"They’re a club that have a clear vision and are really committed to that and good luck to them.”
Quizzed on what happened in the second-half clash with Town wing-back Dominic Thompson which led to them both, and Pompey forward Ronan Curtis being shown yellow cards, he said: "Not much really, I was just standing in my box and he wanted to take a quick throw-on and he came round the outside of me and I was in his way.
"I don’t think I could have got out of his way, I didn’t really anticipate him coming. That was it and then he reacted poorly.
"Just so we’ve all got context, you can ask Kieran McKenna, he apologised on the boy’s behalf, he said that that was well out of order and we’ll speak after. He said the behaviour of the player was well out of order.”
Cowley was pleased with his backline and also intrigued by the way the Blues defended set pieces.
"The defensive line was excellent and we work hard on our defensive line from wide free-kicks. I won’t give too much away,” he said.
"But it’s really interesting because if you watch their defensive line from free-kicks, wow! I’ve never seen what they do. They have a really high line, have nobody on the wall, they have 10 in their line almost and they move as the taker starts their run-up. I’ve never seen that before, but which has been effective for them. But I’ve never seen that tactical quirk, so that was interesting trying to find a way of beating it.
"They’ve kept how many clean sheets? Eight out of nine? When teams keep clean sheets as consistently as they do, they’re a well-coached team. That doesn’t happen without being very well-organised and well-coached both in possession and out. There’s a lot of respect from me to Ipswich.”