“So hard to avoid”: Ipswich midfielder makes honest Ipswich Town claim amid Leeds, Leicester battle

admin | April 18, 2024 | Other Clubs | No Comments

Massimo Luongo, an Ipswich Town midfielder, admits that the outside noise associated with a promotion campaign is “hard to avoid.”

With three games left in the season, Ipswich finds itself in an unusual position. Who knows, the Tractor Boys’ league ranking may surprise those in the home dressing room at Portman Road.

Even though the 2023/24 season will most likely begin with far lower ambitions than Kieran McKenna and his players now have, they now bear the weight of the globe on their shoulders, since their fate is in their own hands.

If they win their last three games, they will be promoted to the Premier League, completing back-to-back promotions.

They have struggled, however, and are now experiencing one of their dry spells in terms of points and goals. They have five points from their past four games and have failed to score in two of the last three. Fortunately for Ipswich, Leicester City and Leeds United have been equally off during the same time span.

Luongo has remarked about one more reason that has made this part of the season difficult for him, in addition to the desire to get points.

Massimo Luongo’s: “hard to avoid” admission

The Australian midfielder has stated that he has finding it tough not to get caught up in the hype surrounding their promotion bid, and that his squad must focus on themselves at this point in the season.

Ipswich will have to keep an eye on their promotion rivals this weekend as they aim to close the gap on, or overtake, the current league leaders, whose scheduled game against Coventry City has been postponed owing to their FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United. The 31-year-old has struggled not to become overly anxious about these outcomes.

Prior to Town’s 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough, Luongo said, via EADT: “It’s so hard to avoid. I get a lot of messages from my friends, ‘ah, the results are going well for you’, but I don’t want it.

“I think I was watching the Champions League on Tuesday anyway, I think everyone probably was. There were 60 minutes to play, and I thought, ‘ah, why are you texting me with 60 minutes? Text me at the end of the game!’

“I think everyone is different in how they want to approach it. I saw Vas [Hladky] before the Watford game and I asked what he’d been up to the night before, he said he watched the Leeds game. I was like ‘oh, fair enough, I watched the Champions League.’

“Everyone’s different. I think, over the course of the season, I haven’t cared about anyone really, just us. It’s easy to keep doing that.

“It’s definitely hard to avoid, especially if you’re on your phone all the time, but I try not to worry about them – especially if they play after us. Then you’re sort of chasing results and stuff like that.”

The Australian international stated that the way their days are arranged when they have matches allows them to focus solely on the task at hand and not worry about what is going on elsewhere.

“Our matchday routine is relaxed, but it’s quite structured,” Luongo added. “We’ve got a lot of meetings, we eat at a certain time, we come here for a meeting, we’re out, then we’ve probably got another meeting before we get on the bus back.

“It is hard to stop and have a look at your phone. Our phones are probably in our lockers anyway. If you sit next to someone, they might look at it, but we tend not to worry at that and focus on the game, especially on gameday.”