I say 'begun to', because many will feel Wednesday's 2-2 draw at Southampton was a case of two points dropped rather than one won.

But after taking three points from four games, surely four points from the last two games is a big step in the right direction.

There had been plenty of speculation about Town using the two-week international break to bring our raft of new signings together into a coherent team.

Teams don't suddenly gel overnight, or even 14 nights for that matter, but the victory over Reading showed that Jim Magilton's work in progress in going in the right direction.

We saw the return of the slick inventive football of last season and showed the genuine goal threat that was missing at Portman Road in our opening games against Preston and Wolves.

In particular the right-wing combination of Moritz Volz and Jon Waters looks like an abundant source of goals.

Jon Stead looks like an improvement on Alan Lee and proved supporters, like myself, wrong, who assumed his loan deal was just a stop-gap until a more tasty transfer target, of the Shola Ameobi-ilk, could be sealed in January, when he penned a three-year deal on Monday

Magilton was unable to bring in his desired left-winger and centre-back on 'emergency loans' for the Reading game but Alan Quinn and Pim Balkestein stepped up to show the situation in those positions might not be as desperate as we thought.

In the case of Balkestein, we could have a long-term solution.

Saturday's performance did expose Town's soft underbelly, which bizarrely, a free-scoring Reading side were unable to exploit.

Unfortunately Ipswich were not so lucky on Wednesday and
shot-shy Southampton breached our defence twice.

If it is the same old Ipswich with our backs to goal, it is becoming obvious we are a whole new animal in terms of our squad's strength.

At St Mary's, Magilton was able to tinker with a winning team, correctly after last year's away day blues, to give us a more solid look and on the bench had Veliche Shumulikoski, Ivan Campo, Kevin Lisbie and Pablo Counago.

Not to mention Gareth McAuley, Ben Thatcher and Danny Haynes waiting in the wings.

If Town can take at least a point at Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow then the clouds will continue to rise but if not, those familiar black ones will be descending on Portman Road again.