Portsmouth boss John Mousinho has played down suggestions that his club has benefited from the Blues’ visit on January 4th being postponed and rescheduled for this evening.
Since then, Pompey have added to their squad, bringing in midfielder Ebou Adams from Derby, striker Millenic Alli on loan from Luton, forward Keshi Anderson from Birmingham and central defender Aji Alese on loan from Sunderland, then ahead of yesterday’s deadline forward Jacob Brown, also on loan from Luton, Paraguayan U23 international winger Gustavo Caballero on loan from Santos and centre-half Madiodio Dia from Norwegian club FK Haugesund but the latter trio not in time to face the Blues.
When the teams were originally set to meet, the Hampshire side had the likes of Marlon Pack, Colby Bishop and Connor Ogilvie absent through injury but all were involved in the 3-0 victory over West Brom at the weekend, although striker Bishop was forced off with an ankle knock and has been ruled out of tonight’s match.
Despite those returns, the injury list remains lengthy with Josh Knight (back), Josh Murphy (foot), Hayden Matthews (ankle), Mark Kosznovszky (knee), Franco Umeh (hamstring), Florian Bianchini (knee), Conor Shaughnessy, Thomas Waddingham (both quad) and Harvey Blair (hip flexor) all currently sidelined.
On-loan Blues forward Conor Chaplin is unavailable against his parent club, while winger Callum Lang joined Preston ahead of last night’s deadline and Yang Min-hyeok was recalled by parent club Spurs earlier in the window and has moved to Coventry.
The win against the Baggies stretched Pompey’s unbeaten run to four games following 1-1 draws at home to local rivals Southampton and at Watford, and a 1-0 win at Sheffield Wednesday.
The Blues’ visit to Fratton Park was initially scheduled prior to the Owls match - ahead of a 4-1 home FA Cup defeat to Arsenal - but was postponed four hours before kick-off due to a frozen pitch.
Pompey, who are unbeaten in five at home in the Championship, were going into that match having been beaten 5-0 at Bristol City and with the squad stretched to the limit by their injury situation.
"It has been much more pleasing recently, we’ve looked a better outfit, we have definitely grown into the season, the new signings have obviously helped as well,” Mousinho told the Portsmouth News ahead of tonight’s match.
"We’ve got a really, really tough test tonight against a very, very good Ipswich side. We’ve got to stay on top of ourselves and make sure we do as best we can.
"I don’t know if we are now a better side than when we should have played them. We obviously had the Bristol City game, which we looked at and were really disappointed with.
"However, on either side of that we played Charlton and then Arsenal. I thought we were excellent against Arsenal, so who knows if we had produced that sort of form against Ipswich.
"We have strengthened in terms of the squad since then, but we have also lost a couple of players.
"We’ve lost a couple of players who would have played against Ipswich - and Ipswich have gained a couple of top-class Championship players. It’s an even playing field of where we would have been on January 4th.”
Reflecting further on his side’s earlier form, Mousinho added: "We got to that stage where we went into the Blackburn game [a 2-1 home win on December 13th] and it was a critical time for us off the back of losing to Swansea [1-0 away].
"We had been on a poor run of form, losing three on the spin. We’d been playing okay, we were okay that night against Swansea, but just didn’t create enough and that has probably been a big thing which has held us back.
"Even in that run of games, we could have converted some of those draws into wins where we had played okay, we had stayed in games, we didn’t concede - but didn’t create enough at the top end of the pitch.”