Skipper Luke Chambers says you can’t put a valuation on the team spirit at Ipswich Town.

Virtually all of their Championship promotion rivals splashed the cash during the January transfer window, but Blues boss Mick McCarthy stuck to his tried and tested approach of recruiting and then getting the best out of unwanted players.

Just like Noel Hunt, Richard Chaplow and Luke Varney were big hits in 2014/15, Kevin Foley and Ben Pringle have proved to be popular in recent weeks as Town have got their season back on track with 1-0 wins against Huddersfield and Nottingham Forest.

Speaking ahead of tonight’s match at rock-bottom Bolton, Chambers said: “We’d love to have the excitement of signing four, five, six million pound players, but that’s no guarantee of success.

“Look at Derby, they have been up and down and got rid of their manager having spent 30, 35 million.

“Sometimes you have to ask yourself, do you want to be one of those clubs or do you want to be fighting your corner on a sustainable front and have a team giving everything they’ve got rather than a team full of prima donnas not pulling up their sleeves?”

“There have been players I didn’t particularly like working with in the past, naming no names, but there are players out there who are totally out for themselves. Sometimes you need to have a bit of that mentality, but at the end of the day it’s a team game.

“There’s been a lot made about me playing at right-back when I’d prefer to be playing centre-half. Kevin Bru started on the right on Saturday, Freddie Sears has played wide; we all do it for the good of the team. If anyone doesn’t buy into that team ethic then they wouldn’t last very long in this dressing room.

“That’s priceless in my opinion. There’s been quite a few players come in over the four years I’ve been here but any changes have always felt seamless because the gaffer does his background checks.

“You can’t really argue with anything the gaffer has done since he’s been here. When I first came in it wasn’t a great place to be. The gaffer has kept on, what, about four players from that time? That says a lot.”

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