Boss Kieran McKenna hailed the Blues’ first Championship game, the live-on-Sky match at Sunderland on Sunday 6th August, as “a really exciting fixture” to get the 2023/24 campaign under way.
Town will travel to take on the Black Cats, whose management team of Tony Mowbray and Mark Venus were members of George Burley’s Blues side which won promotion to the Premier League, at 5pm on the Sunday of the opening weekend.
"It’s a great fixture,” McKenna told Sky Sports News from a fixtures release breakfast for sponsors at Portman Road.
"Of course, it’s an exciting day and whoever we’d got it would have been exciting but to get Sunderland away, one of the biggest best supported clubs in the EFL and a team who got promoted two seasons ago so are trying to make the same journey as us, it’s a really exciting fixture. And it being a Sunday and a televised game adds even more prestige.
"It certainly makes it real. I think it’s five seasons since Ipswich have been back in the Championship, so we’re excited about that.
"We need to go and show that we can compete and we need to be positive and try and attack the division like we did the last one.
"But it’s really exciting, once you get the fixtures in and you can plan the first game and visualise the different phases of the season, there are some really exciting fixtures in there, it really sharpens the focus and certainly means that the first day of pre-season, everyone’s going to be wide-eyed, excited and knowing that we’ve got a lot of hard work to do.”
Not least among those exciting fixtures are the derbies with Norwich City with the Canaries visiting Suffolk for the first time since 2018 on Saturday 16th December, although the game may well move to the Sunday. The trip to Carrow Road is currently pencilled in for Saturday 6th April.
"It’s massive, it really is,” McKenna said when quizzed on those games. "You probably don’t realise until you’re down in this part of the country how big the rivalry is and how intense it is for our supporters.
"I’m well aware of that, it’s been mentioned to me every time I step anywhere near Ipswich town, that the Norwich one is a big one and we’ll do everything we can.
"We know it’s a massive one for the supporters, so we’ll be really motivated and we’ll give everything we can to give the supporters a day to really enjoy.”
Asked whether he needs to make any adjustments to the way his team approaches games having moved up a division, he added: "I think our base intent is going to be the same, we’re going to go out to be a really aggressive, positive, attacking team.
"We know that we’re going to play against stronger teams and stronger opponents than we have been and we’re going to have to adapt and we’re going to have to improve.
"But our base idea won’t change. What has brought us success to this point, what has got the supporters behind us and made us, hopefully, a good team to watch has been how we’ve attacked games and we’ll look to go and do the same.
"We’re not naive, we’re humble about the size of the challenge but we’re not going to veer too far away from how we want to represent this club and how we want to go and attack each game.”
The Northern Irishman, who signed a new contract which runs to the summer of 2027 last week, says he’s not setting any targets in terms of Town’s end position.
"For me, our main focus at the moment is just going and showing that we can be competitive and we can compete every Saturday, every Tuesday or Wednesday, impose our style of play, go and be brave and show that we can compete in this division again,” he said.
"We’re humble, we know it’s a step up, we’re not going in over-focusing in what position we’re going to finish in or what the end outcome is going to be, for us it’s always about the process and making sure that we have a really good pre-season, so that we can go in and compete every week against the big clubs that we’re going to come up against.
"And if we do that, then at the end of the season we’ll be where we deserve to be and we’ll find out what we need to do to keep improving as a football club.”
While the Blues boss is looking to add to his squad, he says keeping hold of last season’s team is similarly crucial.
"Very important, it’s important to keep that consistent base we’ve had,” he continued. "We’ve built on the team since I arrived. We haven’t had too many loans in the door, we’ve generally built with the group of players that were here and the we’ve made additions along the way of players who we thought had the potential to go to the next division for us.
"Our first priority is keeping that group together and going in with that strong base that we’ve had but, for sure, we need to add. We need to add quality, we need to add different dimensions and different attributes to the squad, and we’ll look to do that.
"We’re going in with a strong and healthy squad already but we’re working really hard behind the scenes to add extra attributes, extra qualities to give us the best chance to be competitive because we know it’s a step up and we’re going in with positive momentum, but we know we’re also going to need to add to the group.”
As previously reported, the Town squad are back in to start pre-season training on Monday and McKenna says everyone’s itching to get going again.
"Very much so,” he enthused. "It’s great to finish the season on a successful note. We knew we were promoted from the second-last game with a 6-0 at home [against Exeter] and big celebrations and a really joyous day in the town.
"But we’ve had plenty of time since then, that seems like a long time ago and everyone’s had more than enough time to have a little holiday, have a break, enjoy for a short period the success that we’ve had but everyone now is very focused on the next step.
"The players are working hard, we’ve been in communication with them, they know that they have to come back in fit so that from the first day on Monday we can hit the ground running and we can really build up the things that we’re going to need to be successful this season.
"We’re really looking forward to pre-season. We’ve got a good programme in place and it’s all about being ready for that big challenge now, starting with Sunderland in the first fixture.”