City players will be encouraged to feed off comments made by Ipswich players and quieten a crowd that Bryan Gunn believes has been subdued this season.

City players will be encouraged to feed off comments made by Ipswich players and quieten a crowd that Bryan Gunn believes has been subdued this season.

Town's one-time City loan player Kevin Lisbie said this week he'd like to see Norwich “spanked” - the sort of comment which Gunn says will work in his favour.

Alan Lee - a one-time Ipswich player now doing sterling work on a loan spell at Norwich - is the man who brought the newspaper cuttings into the City dressing room for Gunn to use.

“We'll be sticking comments up in the dressing room from individual players that come out and trying to create a reaction from our squad,” said Gunn.

“It helps - the outrageous ones do. Our lads have been fairly careful in their comments in the press this week so far - I've not had to post any of ours up in our dressing room and say, 'what are you doing?'

“I know he (Jim Magilton) will be doing exactly the same thing down at the other end. It's a battle of mind games beforehand, even in the Championship so we will have to cope with that and get on with it and come 12.45 on Sunday may the best team win.”

Gunn might be accused of playing mind games over the decibel levels at Portman Road, where fans have seen their team struggle at home, with fewer wins and fewer goals on board than even the Canaries.

It's unlikely to be quiet tomorrow when local hostilities are renewed.

“It's a great atmosphere,” he said. “This is what you come into the game for, to play in stadiums with capacity crowds, so young players and old players will hopefully enjoy the experience and I am certainly looking forward to the atmosphere as well - it's a 12.45 kick-off and I don't think it will be dampened by anything or quietened by anything.

“I think it will be as noisy, I don't want to use the word ferocious, but it can be intimidating at times - but whether that's the case at the moment I'm not so sure at Portman Road.

“I've been at some of the games and the crowd have been subdued, I suppose is the right word. So it's up to us to go there and as any good away team will try and do quieten the crowd down.

“That's down to us and our approach to the early part of the game, so we will be hoping to do that and then we will have a good section of the crowd as well, over 2,000 Norwich fans and I know they'll go down there and make as much noise and get behind the team just like our home support did last weekend.

“We need to go to Portman Road to try and achieve a result that will keep us in the Championship.

“If they're finding results difficult maybe we've got an opportunity to take advantage of that. I'm sure that Jim Magilton will be firing his team up very much in the same manner as I'll be doing in the next couple of days.”