LIAM Craig has revealed he gave a glowing report about Ipswich Town to Jack Ross as his former Falkirk teammate edges closer to taking over as manager at Portman Road.
Ross, who landed PFA Scotland manager of the year after guiding St Mirren to the Championship title last term, is reportedly in advanced talks with the Tractor Boys about replacing Mick McCarthy at the helm.
St Johnstone midfielder Craig was an Ipswich academy product, even winning the FA Youth Cup in 2005, and has no doubt the 41-year-old manager is closing in on a massive opportunity.
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“I’ve had a brief discussion with Jack, just in terms of my time there and how I loved it,” Craig explained.
“His assistant, James Fowler, is someone I play golf a lot with and I’ve been winding the two of them up saying I was the last captain to win anything there!
“We were having a laugh and a joke about that. Maybe that will spur them on to shut me up.
“If he gets the job, he certainly doesn’t need any advice from me. I’ve told him what a great time I had and what a great town it was to live in, that it’s a real family club as well.
“But, he’s old enough and shrewd enough now and been about the place enough to know what’s right for him.
“If he was go down there and see the facilities, see the stadium and see the town, he would really embrace it.”
Craig is adamant Ross would be making the move south of the border with more than mere consolidation on his mind, insisting that he would be determined to repeat his heroics at St Mirren and secure promotion back to the promised land of the Premier League.
“When you hear him speaking, he talks about his ambition to manage Scotland one day, to manage at the top level and I love the fact that he’s not scared to tell people that,” continued Craig. “He wants to be the best he can be.
“Jacko’s not going to go down there to be a mid-table club in the Championship, he wants to go down there and his aspirations will be to get them into the Premier League. It wouldn’t be for lack of trying if they never got there.”
With many Ipswich fans having grown impatient with the functional style of football under McCarthy, Edinburgh-born Craig, who also had a spell at Hibernian, reckons Ross’s style of football would be a breath of fresh air for Ipswich.
“It maybe got a little bit stale under Mick McCarthy, but I think Jack would bring a vibrant style of play there,” the 31-year-old added.
“Look at his St Mirren team, they didn’t win the Championship by defending, they won it by scoring a lot of goals.
“He’s very much a young manager coming through, he wants to play out from the back and he wants to play in a style that gets people excited and, with the players he’s had at St Mirren like Lewis Morgan, they’re very much free-flowing.
“I know what Ipswich was like when I was there and the way they wanted to play, I genuinely do think he would be a perfect fit.”
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