Middlesbrough 0-2 Ipswich Town: Terry Hunt's views on the Blues

Well, without wishing to jinx things, it’s difficult to see how we won’t finish in the top six now. We need to average one point per game for the rest of the season. I know there are no guarantees, but...

After the best 20-game start in our history, we have an incredible 48 points from a possible 60.

Flipping heck! Times are good at Town (Image: PA Images)
Somewhere between 70 and 75 is usually enough for the top six, so 26 more will be good enough. As I said, a point a game. Relegation form, in other words.

Of course, expectations are now so high that merely scraping into the top six would be viewed as a disappointment. Our form would have to fall off a cliff. We’re currently 18 points clear of seventh place, for goodness sake!

At the moment, it’s looking like a bit of a re-run of last season for us. Three teams seeming likely to be in the mix for automatic promotion. How crazy is it that finishing third behind Leicester and Leeds would now be viewed as disappointing.

Anyway, all of the above is breaking the rules set by Kieran McKenna. He tells us he doesn’t look at the league table, just focuses on the next game. All sensible stuff. But that doesn’t stop the fans dreaming.

The game at Middlesbrough was another potentially tricky hurdle overcome without too much difficulty. All the pre-match talk about their injury crisis worried me. We’ve heard such things before and then come a cropper.

But we produced a thoroughly professional performance right through the team, from the ever-impressive Vaclav Hladky in goal to the hard-working George Hirst up front.

Town fans enjoying themselves at the Riverside (Image: Ross Halls)
Yet again, our bench was important, with Omari Hutchinson coming on to seal the game with a clinical finish after being put through by Conor Chaplin.

Mind you, I was relieved we don’t have the dreaded VAR at this level. They would probably have spent an eternity drawing lines to discover that Hutchinson’s right big toenail was offside when Chaplin played him through.

The only downside of the day was Sam Morsy picking up his ninth yellow card of the season for kicking the ball away deep into added time. Silly boy.

There’s been some talk about leaving the skipper out of the team for the trip to Watford on Tuesday evening, to make sure he doesn’t get another booking which would rule him out of the Norwich game.

That’s silly talk, bluntly. We will go to Watford with our strongest team, and that definitely includes Morsy. I know the Norwich derby carries a lot more emotional baggage than the match at Watford, but both have three points at stake.

Terry wouldn't rest Sam Morsy at Watford (Image: Warren Page)
Morsy managed to avoid getting booked for a lengthy spell last season to escape a ban, so let's hope he can do the same at Vicarage Road.

The atmosphere will be white-hot at Portman Road next Saturday lunchtime, even though it is an early kick-off, which is usually the ultimate footballing passion killer.

This is viewed as a great opportunity for Ipswich to end the long and painful period of playing second fiddle in derby games.

Remember, it’s more than 14 years since Jim Magilton’s side recorded our last victory over the Canaries. The Irishman’s reward was being sacked the next day, but that’s another story.

We haven’t played Norwich for nearly five years, the last derby being a 3-0 defeat at Carrow Road which I remember absolutely nothing about, thank goodness.

Town fans ae all hoping for a long overdue derby day win this weekend (Image: Ross Halls)
To demonstrate how much has changed since then, only Kayden Jackson survives from our squad that day, and he didn’t get on the pitch. For all our other players, it will be their first experience of an East Anglian Derby.

Logically, we should win. We’re flying, and the Canaries look every inch a very average Championship side. But when did logic play a part in an Ipswich-Norwich game? I can see us edging a thriller.