Freddie Ladapo has a good feeling about Town’s promotion chances this season — it’s akin to last term when he helped Rotherham to climb out of League One as runners-up to title winners Wigan.
The striker scored 15 goals for the Millers in the 2021/22 season, 11 of them in the league, and with 13 already in the bag from all competitions this time round, he is in a healthy position to beat that tally in his first season with the Blues.
Manager Kieran McKenna recently commented that he has been particularly impressed with how Ladapo has not only scored a decent number of goals but also shown a willingness to learn, improve and evolve as a player in his new surroundings.
Ladapo said: "I think when you leave one club and its style of play to join another that likes to do things differently, the first thing you have to do is to adjust accordingly.
"Sooner or later, you probably get a grasp of it and if you have an open mind, the more you play the stronger the grasp becomes.
"We’re a possession-based team and I’ve learned how to create different movements and do things differently to how I would have done in the past and in the previous three years when I was at Rotherham. It’s been a nice change and it’s a change I wanted, and since coming in here I’ve been getting happier all the time.
"I think there are high expectations here, through the club, the owners, the manager, his staff, the players and of course the fans as well. It means we are going into a lot of games, not so much hopeful but expectant, which means that when it doesn’t go your way the level of disappointment is maybe more than it needs to be.
"It can mean a draw sometimes feels more like a loss and when you win you are looking to build on it with a few consecutive wins to make sure you are staying on track. I would say we do have a similar feeling to what I experienced at Rotherham as we moved towards promotion there.
"Losing is never something you can welcome but the 0-0 draw with Burnley in the FA Cup wasn’t something to get down about because they are at the top of the Championship and clearly bound for the Premier League.
"That will be their destination and to play as well as we did against them, to do all the things we wanted to do, was a big positive from which we took a lot of confidence.”
It was put to Ladapo that there are clearly different ways of plotting promotion from League One, which he has experienced for himself at both his previous and present employers, and he responded: "You could say Rotherham know the secret to getting out of League One because they’ve been promoted several times in recent years.
"I had the luxury of going there and being promoted twice, which was great, and a big reason for wanting to come here was that I felt good about Ipswich’s chances of going up. Like the club, it has been my main priority for the season.”
When Ladapo failed to find the net in Town’s first six League One fixtures of the season it led to some fans questioning the wisdom of bringing him to Portman Road but he has well and truly silenced his critics since then and his popularity with the supporters was underlined this week when he carried off the Player of the Month award for January.
It clearly meant a great deal to the player, who said: "I had been nominated before, which is always a sign that things are going well, but to actually win the award was great and I need to thank the fans who voted for me.
"It’s very much appreciated. January was a great month for me. I have felt good, confident that I’m improving in a lot of areas and that I’m doing the things I was brought here to do.”
Next up for Town is Saturday’s short trip along the A14 to take on a Cambridge side with only won from their last 11 league games and sitting second from bottom in the League One table.
Town have sold all their tickets for the game and Ladapo laughed: "It will probably feel just like a home game because we will have so many supporters there and they can be very loud when they get going. There have been a lot of games like that earlier in the season too.
"Nothing less than a win is what’s required at Cambridge because it’s all about building momentum and not falling any further behind the top two.
"The top of the table could look very different in the next couple of weeks because Sheffield Wednesday are playing Plymouth this weekend and then they come to Ipswich a week later.
"We hope it will be tighter at the top and it’s around this stage of the season that you really start to see who’s going to pull away and who’s struggling a bit for form and confidence.
"For us, we need to be focused on not letting them pull away, as well as putting a run of wins together ourselves.”
Ladapo will go into the game at the Abbey Stadium at the end of a week in which he celebrated his 30th birthday on top of the Player of the Month award, and he agreed he is one of the older, more experienced players in what is still, overall, a young squad.
He said: "Well, you can’t be young forever, can you? But I am enjoying my football and feeling good about life, so that’s the main thing. You’ve got to enjoy your life if you can and I’m very happy with things right now, both on and off the pitch.
"I just enjoyed my birthday at home with my family. They surprised me when they came over to see me and I had a lot of friends there too. My baby girl woke up because of all the noise in the house but generally she is very good and sleeps well.”