Ipswich Town: Massimo Luongo on new summer signings

Four of Town's five summer signings - Ben Johnson, Aro Muric, Jacob Greaves and Liam Delap - played at Portman Road yesterday as the Blues were beaten 2-1 by Fortuna Dusseldorf in a friendly.

READ MORE: Alex's verdict on friendly defeat

And Luongo, now one of the elder statesmen in the group, said the new faces - which also include £18m club record signing Omari Hutchinson - have blended in well.

Ben Johnson in action yesterday (Image: Steve Waller)
"Brilliant, actually," he enthused. "I’d say we’re a pretty easy group to come into, I think we’ve got quite good lads. I think you can tell already that they understand the roles that they’ve got.

“First and foremost they need to work hard, and they have done, so that’s brilliant.

“They’re all really nice guys, so that’s a bonus, and from what I can tell they’re really good players. It’s all looking pretty good.

“I think the boss is really particular in who he brings in, really conscious of ruining that culture that he's built and he’s picked so far so good.”

Liam Delap made his Portman Road debut (Image: Stephen Waller)
Of £15m man Delap, who will be competing with George Hirst for the lone striker role, but can also play elsewhere, Luongo added: "Liam, I remember when we played against him last year, he’s so powerful, he’s such a good runner.

"He left me in the dust a couple of times in the game.

“He’s powerful, his striking ability is really good, his finishing is really good. Probably off the right, up front, he’s been a bit of both last year, so I’m not sure where he’s going to play, but he looks promising.

“It’s a tough job up there, rarely do our strikers last 90 minutes and we missed Hirsty for a little bit last season and you could really feel that we lost that press and I think we’ve got two boys that can do it and they do it really fast and they do it really strong and he does leave a foot in sometimes, so it’s definitely a massive strength of ours.”

Jacob Greaves on the ball (Image: Ross Halls)

Of the game with Fortuna, Luongo stressed that the minutes, rather than the result, were the important thing.

“I think the priority is always the workout rather than the result," he opined. "It would’ve been nice to win, it was nice to beat Shakhtar in Austria, but I think we’ve got to remind ourselves where we are and the process.

“Just worry about our minutes, worry about getting what we need out of the game and improving.”

New keeper Aro Muric (Image: Stephen Waller)
He added: "Obviously we’re a very competitive team, so when we lose a game we’re a bit down or we want to figure out why we won the game and I think the boss is a prime example of that.

“I think we just need to remind ourselves, we’ll get in Monday morning and have a look at what we did wrong or what we need to do, just a few adjustments and it could make the game look completely different.

“Their first goal was really good, to be fair. I think that caught us by surprise. Having said that, our goal was really good. Two positive things

“Little things that we could probably do better individually and fitness-wise, I think we’ll get better, the fitter we get."