Ashton: Premier League Rivals Surprised by Ipswich Atmosphere, says Paul Vegas

In an interview with TWTD, he revealed that Premier League clubs who have visited them this season have been pleasantly surprised. They came in with low expectations, thinking, 'This is just little Ipswich,' but were shocked by what they found.

“You can’t tell me that the atmosphere at Portman Road is not better than we witnessed at Manchester City, than we witnessed at West Ham etc. It’s electric.

“And this is the rallying call, we need it. This is going to be absolutely key to keeping us in this division.

“Portman Road has to be a fortress. Not just at the start of the game, at the start of the second half, it’s got to be as noisy again.

“And we’ve got to find ways to really raise the roof, because when Portman Road is rocking, it’s some place.”

Ashton also said: “The home games, the atmosphere and the performances have been outstanding, we’ve looked like what we are as Ipswich but you’ve got 12 new players falling into a system, learning how Kieran (McKenna) wants them to play.

“We have international breaks, we’ve now got nine away, so Kieran can’t have them every single day as he would have done, so it’s going to take a little bit of time.

“As someone who was at West Bromwich Albion for 16 years, we don’t lose against the Villa, that’s not acceptable.

“We probably should have won the game, their board said to me after the game that they felt they’d got away with that one.

“West Ham was a bad day at the office, I don’t think we’ve had too many of those under Kieran.

“But we’ll do from that and what he always does is he learns. He learns and he adapts, so I’m sure that’s what we’ll do and we’ll go again.

“It’s going to be a tough season and I am utterly convinced this team will be competitive right to the death.

“We’ll go again in January, that’s what we do, but we’re building and we’re learning, we’ve got to do that pretty quickly.”