Joey Barton: Faithful few who travelled to Ipswich are a huge help to Fleetwood Town

Head coach Barton said: "A this stage of the season everyone is fighting for something, be it to stay up or go up.

"We had 88 fans here, so we were massively outnumbered but they were superb getting behind the lads.

"It's strange for me because all the clubs I played for had massive fan bases, but coming to Fleetwood and seeing them get on the coaches or in their cars to drive to Ipswich to support the boys, we must be enormously thankful

"Whether it's one or 100,000, what is a football club without your supporters, however many there are?"

And a large fan-base may not be a great advantage if they start to get on their players' back and there was evidence of that at Portman Road.

Barton added: "We knew that if this place was rocking and at full flow it would be difficult for us.

" I was worried we would get drawn into the negativity that was in the ether. I thought we were dragged into playing at Ipswich's tempo.

"When we played at our tempo in the first half I didn't think they could get near us, but I thought we were getting drawn into the lethargy in the game.

"I had to give the lads a bit of a rollicking at half-time about upping the tempo because you were expecting Paul (Lambert, Ipswich boss) to get a response from his players."

What Barton was determined not to do this week was give Town's opponents any extra motivation as he had by criticising Ipswich ahead of their visit to Highbury in October, a match the Tractor Boys won 1-0.

The head coach reflected: "Me being a little naive in my managerial career, I thought it would be interesting to test the boundaries of Ipswich's psychology.

"It backfired that day because we got beat, so I thought I'd better not try that again - I'd let the players do the talking.

"Ipswich had enough motivation trying to maintain their own promotion push, so that was something I had to learn and it's been a steep learning curve.

"But you are always trying to seek a psychological advantage if you can. I've seen the likes of Jose Mourinho and Sir Alex Ferguson, masters at it over the years, but I ended up with a bit of egg on my face (in October) as the Ipswich players responded in the right manner for their manager.

"You are always seeking a bit of psychological oneupmanship but on that occasion I tried it and lost. On this occasion I didn't try anything and won, so maybe that's the recipe for going forward."