IAN Westlake has been suffering sleepless nights. But the 22-year-old midfielder is now ready to give flagging Ipswich Town a timely lift.Westlake is ready to make a shock return to the Blues' first team for Saturday's Championship game against Derby County at Portman Road.

By Elvin King

IAN Westlake has been suffering sleepless nights. But the 22-year-old midfielder is now ready to give flagging Ipswich Town a timely lift.

Westlake is ready to make a shock return to the Blues' first team for Saturday's Championship game against Derby County at Portman Road.

Ipswich have collected just two points from the last 24 and are in desperate need of any help they can get to raise themselves out of their current nightmare.

A 2-1 defeat at Watford yesterday stretched their run since a win to eight matches.

Westlake said: “I hope to be back in contention for this Saturday's game.

“When I hurt my ankle last month, I was told I would be out until the summer.

“They said they thought my season was over and the fear was that I'd ruptured ligaments.

“This was very scary, especially when experts started talking about reconstruction operations.

“I had a few sleepless nights and it's fair to say I wasn't very good company at that time.

“But it turns out the injury is nowhere near as bad as first thought.

”I've been trying to build it up and I trained with the youth team yesterday.

“Hopefully I will be with the senior lads tomorrow, Thursday and Friday.

“The last few weeks have been tough to watch. We are having a sticky spell and you can see the confidence in the team isn't as high as it should be.”

Ipswich fielded a rare luxury of two experienced strikers in Alan Lee and scorer Nicky Forster yesterday, but Lee damaged a hamstring and is out for the season.