Ipswich Town skipper Luke Chambers is excited about the squad which manager Mick McCarthy is building ahead of a fresh bid for Championship promotion.

McCarthy may have sold left-back Tyrone Mings to Bournemouth for £8m, but he has recruited proven striker Brett Pitman, flying wingers Ryan Fraser and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, as well as young centre-back Josh Yorwerth this summer.

One or two more additions are still being targeted before the season opener at Brentford on August 8, a crop of talented youngsters have caught the eye in pre-season, while star striker Daryl Murphy has penned a new contract.

On the latter, Chambers said: “Hallelujah! I’m good friends with Murph and have been on his case all summer saying ‘you don’t want to leave, you don’t want to leave’.

“Well he never wanted to leave, he’s signed up for another two years and hopefully he can have another brilliant season.

“Everyone in the squad loves him to pieces and I think the feeling is mutual.

“It was always going to happen that teams would express an interest in him because there’s no-one in the league that’s like him.

“I don’t think anyone would have forgiven the club for selling him and then seeing him go off and score 27 goals for someone else though.”

He continued: “You look at the strikeforce we have now… Pits (Brett Pitman) has scored a great goal (in last Friday’s 4-3 defeat against Fortuna Dusseldorf in Germany), that’s one of the best goals I’ve seen live I think, and he has settled in really well.

“We’ve got Bish (Teddy Bishop), we’ve got Murph, we’ve got Didz (David McGoldrick), we’ve got Freddie (Sears), we’ve got Varns (Luke Varney) to come back. That’s a group of players who could reach 60 goals easily.”

Chambers added: “No disrespect to the lads that have left and the lads that have been here before, because we’ve had a couple of fantastic seasons, but I think the gaffer has slowly improved the squad every year and hopefully this season will be the season for us.

“We look like we’ve got a bit more pace in the team, we’ve got a few young players trying to stamp their mark and have still got three of the best players in the league (Murphy, McGoldrick and Christophe Berra) to come back into the squad.

“The gaffer is definitely building something and I think the fans are as ready to go again as we are.”

Ipswich’s pre-season campaign continues with a match at League Two side Cambridge United tomorrow night (7.45pm).