Mark Robins is looking forward to the “challenge” that awaits his Sky Blues side at the Cardiff City Stadium tomorrow afternoon.
City produced a good performance in their last outing against Watford and are taking on a Cardiff City side this weekend who are unbeaten in four league games under their new manager Mick McCarthy.
Sky Blues boss Robins acknowledged the former Republic of Ireland manager’s experience and feels the fixture represents a good challenge to his squad in the build-up to a tough week of fixtures.
Robins said: “It’s a big challenge, that’s for sure, they’ve got aspirations of getting into the top six, they’ve not long been out of the Premier League.
“Mick’s is a really experienced manager, a great bloke, a really top man and he’s got a wealth of experience, you can see results are coming from his leadership at this moment in time.
“He’s unbeaten to date and they’ve got a squad full of talented players, it’s a tough match, but a really good game in the lead up to the next three games because all three are tasty games.
“His Ipswich team were a tough nut to crack; they were physical but had some really good quality as well and always made it difficult.
“The players at their disposal, he’s going to make good use of them, and you can see that now, it’s a really good game for us to look forward to and try and get our teeth stuck into.”
The manager also hopes to have some more players at his disposal for the clash in the Welsh capital and stressed the importance of having a fully fit squad with games coming thick and fast over the next couple of weeks.
“It’s a mouth-watering week, we’ve got Cardiff and then you can look forward to Norwich and Brentford on the TV next Saturday, it’s a good week to look forward to.
“You can take encouragement from the fact that we’re starting to look like we can get the players back on the field, in a run of games where you’ve got three in seven days.
“On the back of that, you’ve got another run of fixtures where they come thick and fast and hopefully, we can have everybody available at one time so we can start to have a different look.
“The bench the other day was very young, hopefully that will be slightly different tomorrow and hopefully we can come through today without any other knocks or anything like that and finish the preparation off and look forward to the game.”