New boy James Collins has revealed he has first-hand experience of winning exactly the same type of battle in which Town are currently embroiled at the foot of the Championship.

The veteran defender was in the first of his two spells with West Ham when it seemed everyone, including many Hammers’ fans, was convinced they were going to be relegated from the Premier League.

Collins, 35, recalled: “It was in 2007 and a lot of people had written us off, but we won seven of our last nine games to stay up. So until someone tells us otherwise this Ipswich squad is fully in the mood and behind the manager to go and get the results to keep us up.

“What do we need to do? That’s easy — we need to win games. I’ve looked at the points when teams have gone down and teams have stayed up, and it seems to be around 45 to 47 points on average that you need to stay up. It’s doable.

“The gaffer spoke to us this morning and there’s still 54 points to play for. Everyone knows we’re in a situation where we can’t go into games with the fear of losing.

“We’ve got to go and win games, which means we have to defend a bit better than we did against Blackburn and certainly score more goals. But I’ll say it again, it’s doable.”

Asked if he believed a team that has won just three of their 30 games in all competitions this season could suddenly experience a surge of form, he replied: “I think so. Four or five of us came in for the Rotherham game, when we had only been here for a few days, and got through that one on a bit of adrenalin. That gave everyone a lift but last weekend there was a bit of a lull.

“All the lads who came in have played very little football this season and the past couple of weeks’ training has done everyone a lot of good.

“This weekend we’re going up to Villa Park, a lovely stadium, and we’re all going to be that bit fresher and fitter. We’ll be going there looking to win the game and that’s what we’ve got to go and do in every one of our remaining games.”

Collins was thrown in at the deep end to face relegation rivals Rotherham, having only trained twice with his new colleagues. But the gamble paid off as Town grabbed a 1-0 win and they currently lie bottom of the table, seven points adrift of the Millers.

Two games into is Town career, Collins added: “It’s been fine, surprisingly. I was struggling a bit after the Rotherham game because I’d only come in and trained for a couple of days, although I’d been doing my own fitness and training with West Ham, and Villa before that. So I was a bit stiff but I’m miles better this week and looking forward to the weekend.

“It was great to playing against Rotherham and one of them where I didn’t really have time to think about it. I just came in and played.

“I was lucky that I was here before, early in the season, and I already knew all the boys and the people around the club. That made it quite easy to come in and it couldn’t really have gone any better.”

Collins earned the Man of the Match accolade against the Yorkshiremen, in particular for the way he inspired his team-mates during a second half in which the visitors bombarded the Town goal throughout a one-sided second half in a vain bit to cancel out Will Keane’s first goal for the Blues before the break.

He continued: “I think it just comes down to nerves and the position the club is in at the minute. If you’re 1-0 up it’s quite easy to think, ‘Right, we’ve got to hang on to this’ and I think we did that by defending very well.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s three points and that’s all that matters, but we can’t do that in every game, that’s for sure. We need to go out and play for 90 minutes, so hopefully that can start the weekend.

“The atmosphere when I made my debut was fantastic and to be honest I didn’t expect it, not with the club bottom of the league and a bit of doom and gloom around.

“The crowd were amazing and we need to use that as a catalyst to have more performances like that.

“We weren’t too happy with the defeat at Blackburn. I think if we’d got in 1-0 up at half-time it would have been a different game because in the situation we’re in we could have done with something to hang on to, like the 1-0 lead against Rotherham.

“The mentality within the team seems to be that we can hang on, so to go in at half-time 0-0 we were a little bit disappointed.

“After they scored two sloppy goals, from our point of view defensively, we couldn’t get back in the game. It’s a game we look back on with great disappointment because it was one we were looking forward to after the positives from the Rotherham game.

“It’s tough at any level. In any game, in any league you play in, if you go 1-0 down it’s tough, especially with the situation we’re in as a club.

“To go 1-0 down it’s quite easy to shrink in this situation. We’ve got to win football games and we should be looking to come out and dominate the ball, dominate teams and if we don’t score first get back into the game because we’ve simply got to win football games.”

Collins insists there is still a positive mood around the training ground as Town prepare for Saturday’s trip to the Midlands.

“Morale has been great and after the Rotherham game it was right up there,” he said. “After losing at Blackburn we were all bitterly disappointed but it is what it is and the only answer is for us to go out and win football games.

“The training has been great and the gaffer is firing it into the lads that while we want to perform well it’s about getting three points.

“Everything we’ve done in training is leading to that and it’s not an easy place to go, Villa Park, but the way we’ve trained — and if we can perform how this squad can — there’s no reason why we can’t go and get the three points.”

Photo: TWTD

ITFCsince73 added 18:41 - Jan 24 That's fantastic James. Please pass all this experience and info onto your team mates ASAP.
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Pecker added 19:27 - Jan 24 I hear you, I don't think so. but I hear you.
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