Top scorer Conor Chaplin would love to reach the 20-goal mark in League One this season but has stressed that what matters most is that the team continue to win games and amass points in their bid to win promotion back to the Championship.
Chaplin has netted 22 times this season, 19 of them coming in league games, including one in each of the Blues’ last three fixtures against Derby, Wycombe and, earlier this week, at Cheltenham when his goal put Town ahead and the Robins levelled late on to end a run of eight successive wins and nine clean sheets in a row for Kieran McKenna’s men.
The former Portsmouth, Coventry and Barnsley player has scored 33 times in his 93 appearances in all competitions for Town but when asked about his favourites he replied: "I don’t want to sound corny but I don’t really care about the goals I’ve scored already this season or what they’ve been like.
"That’s something I can visit at the end of the season. For now, we have six games left and I just want to score as many goals as possible. It’s all about the next one and I hope I don’t have to wait too long.
"Getting one more to reach 20 in the league would be a real milestone and it would make me very proud to do that for the first time in my career.
"Fingers crossed, it comes before the end of the season, but I’m not just thinking about that. I’m more interested in us winning games and if we do that, I won’t care about who is scoring the goals.
"I’d happily sacrifice not scoring any goals in the last six, for sure, if it meant we won the games. If I am going to score goals, I want them to be important; there’s no point scoring goals that don’t matter.
"I’ll be brutally honest — I want my goals to be meaningful, in wins, to help the team get to where we want to be. That’s all I’m focused on.”
However. Chaplin was unable to elaborate much on the golf-themed celebrations from him and George Hirst when they were both on target in the last home game, which saw Wycombe beaten 4-0.
He added: "We’re golf partners and we’ve been winning, and there’s not much more to it than that. We’ve been partners on two occasions and we won them both — two out of two so far and we’re flying.
"But we’ve not been playing much golf recently because the football has to come first and we’ve had a lot of games.
"What I will say is that I picked my partner well. Hirsty is ridiculously good on the golf course, very, very good, and I didn’t have a clue about that before I chose him.”
With another capacity crowd set to attend for tomorrow’s visit of Charlton, Chaplin is looking forward to the occasion. "Of course, that’s what it’s all about,” he said. "It’s what I call good pressure, playing for a big club and in a packed stadium, and we take a real pride in performing for them, which you can probably see from our performances.
"I’ve been starting games and we’ve been getting good results, which helps. Saturday or Tuesday night, we can’t wait for the games to come round. It’s an exciting time to be an Ipswich player and we’re relishing the challenges that come at this stage of the season.
"Over the course of my career, I’ve had my fair share of things to play for towards the end of a season, so it’s not anything that I’m not familiar with and it’s business as usual, really.
"Nothing really changes in that respect — it’s crunch time at the end of the season and results are highlighted that bit more compared to performances. We’re in a process here, so it’s about following that and building on what we’ve achieved so far.”
Town will want to take maximum points again after Easter Monday’s 1-1 draw at Cheltenham, but Chaplin added: "I definitely feel it could be a good point come the end of the season. It was probably one of our hardest away games of the season in terms of the weather conditions and the state of the pitch, both things that were beyond our control.
"It’s always disappointing when you lose a lead but on reflection, I still believe it could work out to be a good point.”
Asked if he was surprised when the ball arrived at his feet inside the box from Harry Clarke’s long throw for the opening goal, he replied: "No, not really. I’ve got a knack for that sort of thing and I have done throughout my whole career.
"I definitely wasn’t surprised. If I was surprised, I wouldn’t even bother getting into the box. The reason I’m in there is to sniff out chances like that and it was a big one for the team, so I was really happy about that.”
Meanwhile, tomorrow’s game is likely to see midfielder Scott Fraser and striker Macauley Bonne back on familiar territory, and Chaplin said: "We know a lot about both of them. They are obviously very good players at this level but that can also be said about a number of their players, excellent individuals, throughout the team.
"It should be a tough game but also a good game of football based on how they like to play, so hopefully it will be a good spectacle for the fans.
"It’s all very tight at the top of the table with us on 82 points, Plymouth in second with 83 and Sheffield Wednesday back on top with 84, as well as Barnsley in fourth with 78, but we can all remember last season when the numbers were similar and we were trying to get into the play-offs.
"It has been a frightening couple of years in terms of the number of points accumulated by the top teams in the league, but it’s a challenge that we’re all excited by and ready for.”