"So hard to avoid" - Massimo Luongo makes honest Ipswich Town claim amid Leeds, Leicester battle | OneFootball

Highlights

Ipswich Town midfielder Massimo Luongo has admitted that it is: "hard to avoid," the outside noise that comes with a promotion push.

With three games left of their season, Ipswich find themselves in what most would have expected to be an unexpected position. Who knows, that feeling of surprise over the Tractor Boys' league standing may be shared by those within the home dressing room at Portman Road.

Even though the 2023/24 campaign will have most likely started with much more reduced ambitions than the one that Kieran McKenna and his players now hold, they now have the weight of the world on their shoulders, as their destiny is in their hands.

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

There have been struggles though, and they are currently going through one of their dry patches, both in terms of points and goals. They've picked up five points from their last four games, and have failed to score in two of their last three. Luckily for Ipswich, Leicester City and Leeds United have been equally off over the same time period.

As well as the yearning for points and finding the back of the net, Luongo has spoken about one other factor that he has found tough at this stage of the season.

Massimo Luongo's: "hard to avoid" admission

The Australian midfielder has said that he has found it difficult not to get caught up in the noise surrounding their promotion push, and that his team just have to focus on themselves at this time in the campaign.

Ipswich will have to watch on this weekend as their promotion rivals look to make up ground on, or overtake, the current league leaders, whose scheduled game against Coventry City has been postponed due to their FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United. Not getting too concerned over these results has been tough for the 31-year-old.

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 Aussie international did say that the way their days are structured when they have matches does help them to just focus on the job 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."

Ipswich's next two games could decide their fate

Not one of the top four has an easy run-in, which is a good and bad thing for all of them. Southampton still have both Leicester and Leeds to play, and those two still have play-off chasers to face as well.

Ipswich's next two matches mirror that theme. They take on Hull City, at the MKM Stadium, and the aforementioned Sky Blues, away from Portman Road as well. Their last game of the season is against Huddersfield Town, at home; a game they will be expected to win, even with their current underperformances.

Both of those away games are against tough opposition who still have a lot to play for, as they try to sneak into the top six in the final few weeks of the campaign. Those are the types of games that you don't want at this stage of the season.

But, if they can get through them with good results, it will set them up brilliantly for the final day of the season against a relegation-threatened Terriers side.

They, too, will probably have something to play for, but you'd much rather face a bad team with something to play for, at home, than a good one with something to play for, away from home.