Former Ipswich Town player Kieron Dyer has issued an impassioned plea to all those associated with the club – ‘the negativity has to stop’.

A downturn in results at the start of 2015 saw the Blues slip from second to seventh in the Championship table, with supporters of the Championship’s longest-serving club beginning to fear an anti-climax to the most promising season in a decade.

Saturday’s dramatic 1-0 victory at Watford lifted the Mick McCarthy’s men back into sixth-spot though and Dyer hopes that the mood will now lighten as Mick McCarthy’s men prepare for the final seven matches.

“For a while everything just seemed so negative; the fans, the media, everyone,” said Dyer, 36, who contacted this newspaper to air his frustrations.

“I was driving home from London last Tuesday night and listening to the radio after the 1-0 win against Bolton. You’d have thought we were bottom of the league hearing some of the comments. It’s the same when I pick up the paper and see these survey pages.

“I get that we were second at one stage in the season and that things dropped off, but the players were exceeding themselves week-in, week-out and it was always going to be difficult to maintain that.

“There’s still a fantastic opportunity and I think everyone needs to be behind the team.”

The former Westbourne High School pupil, who was capped 33 times by England, continued: “If this was Manchester City we were talking about then I’d understand the negativity, but this is a club with one of the lowest budgets in the league.

“Mick’s worked wonders with his recruitment. It’s been well documented that he has had no money to spend, so the squad he’s pulled together is ridiculous really.

“He’s managed to pick up players whose careers were going nowhere and been able to resurrect them.

“He’s done an unbelievable job, absolutely remarkable, yet at times it all seems to be doom and gloom. I can’t get my head around why.

“If you’d told me at the start of the season that with seven games to go we’d be sixth-place I’d have snapped your hand off.

“Everyone should be doing cartwheels at the moment, but at times it’s felt like an end of the world mentality.”

– See today’s EADT and Ipswich Star for Dyer on the specific criticism that has been levelled at a lack of spending, style of play, Mings/McGoldrick’s form and Chambers playing at right-back.