Town’s joint-leading scorer, Marcus Harness, has promised fans there is plenty more to come from him in what remains of a season he has started in devastating form.

Harness, who arrived from Portsmouth, has netted five goals in all competitions, including two in the 6-0 Papa Johns Trophy thrashing of Northampton, while Conor Chaplin has a similar haul with all of his coming in League One games.

The Coventry-born player, who launched his career at Burton, is looking forward to adding further goals but, when asked to sum up his start to the current campaign, emphasised he is also keen to contribute more in the way of assists for Chaplin & Co.

He said: “It was a difficult start for me here at Ipswich. I know we had some good results but I also felt it took me a little bit of time to get up to speed.

“With such a high-quality squad here, I felt I would have to be on my game all the time, but if I’m honest I maybe struggled to do that for a few weeks.

“Of course, once the goals started flowing it helped me to relax and get settled in, which has gone well.

“More recently, I’ve started to show more of what I can do and I believe there is still a lot more to come from me. I’ve settled in well and I’m really enjoying myself, so I just want to keep it going and carry on building something here.

“Scoring five goals has been amazing and I’ve learned so much about the game and especially about different players, different people and different ways.

“I have known for some time how good football feels and how it should feel when it’s going well, but since coming to Ipswich I have learned more about the theory and why certain things happen in games.

“It has been an excellent education because I’m not sure I knew about stuff like that before I signed.

“I’m learning about the theory and how to look at situations differently, and it’s exciting to be a part of it.

“I’m 26 now and at this stage in my career it’s a great place for me to be and the manager is a great person to be working with as I look to push on and keep improving.”

While fully understanding the reasons why, Harness and his colleagues were disappointed not to be in action at the weekend, but while the home clash with Cambridge United will have to be rescheduled he can’t wait to return to action tomorrow when Joey Barton brings his Bristol Rovers side to Portman Road.

“We were all looking forward to playing against Cambridge after a good week — a tough week — of training for it,” he added. “We felt like the energy in the camp, plus everyone’s focus and where we were at, was good.

“We felt as if we were in a really good place to attack that game and do well, so we were disappointed to hear it had been called off.
“But we just have to move on and we’ve done some more work today and of course we are focused on playing Bristol Rovers and putting into practice the game plan the manager has drawn up for us.

“Now it is up to us to turn in a good performance tomorrow night and hopefully get a good result as well.”

Asked if he was enjoying the system favoured by manager Kieran McKenna, which sees the Blues unbeaten in seven league games this season, Harness replied: “Yes, definitely. Obviously, I’ve found some goalscoring form, but I still don’t think I’ve been at my creative best.

“I usually say I’m more of a player who creates and assists than a scorer, but of course I’ll take all the goals I can get.

“I slid one ball in for Jacko [Kayden Jackson] at Accrington in our last game and I’d like to show more of that side of my game because I feel I can offer a lot in the way of assists.”

Harness also believes Town are sufficiently well equipped to continue their impressive form and to deal with the inevitable injuries and suspensions that can crop up in what is a marathon, 46-game season.

He added: “With the game being called off at the weekend and potentially with the international break — I don’t know how many players we could have called up — when the games start to stack up the depth of quality in our squad means we are probably better equipped to deal with the situation than a lot of our rivals.

“When the manager makes a change to the team, or when he decides the time is right to introduce someone from the bench, the strength of the team doesn’t suffer.

“It is working well and the boys at the top end of the pitch are pressing with high energy, which means doing a lot of running.

“Going out there and being 100 per cent for, say, 60 minutes is fine because you know someone can come on in your place and continue in the same way for the rest of the game, which is punishing teams when they are maybe starting to tire. We’re fortunate to have that and we want to use it to our advantage.”

Photos: ITFC/Matchday Images

Bazza8564 added 17:55 - Sep 12 A great comment and one I would echo “Yes, definitely. Obviously, I've found some goalscoring form, but I still don't think I've been at my creative best. In front of goal 10/10 but its clear his link up stuff isnt quite at that level yet. But to be honest after a couple of games i said that about Conor, Wes and Leif, then suddenly they clicked all in one game.... Great to read the guy is setting his sights so high, it can only bode well for us.....

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SheffordBlue added 18:27 - Sep 12 Interesting bit about him learning footballing theory here and it being new to him. I suspect this will really 'click' with some players and they'll become a lot better as a result. Not sure it will benefit everyone though.
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ringwoodblue added 20:35 - Sep 12 It's great when we can sign a player from one of our promotion rivals and they turn out to be a gem. Harness is shaping up well and hopefully Camara will be equally successful.
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midastouch added 12:48 - Sep 13 Looks a really shrewd piece of business signing Marcus from Pompey. I had a feeling he'd do well here but he's done even better than I was expecting. He looked a bit off the pace first game against Bolton but ever since then he's been one of our best players. If he keeps his form up he could be our player of the season, however, much too early in the season to be speculating on that just yet. Well done Marcus, keep it up and you'll make yourself a real fan favourite here! :-)

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