The Blues initial trip to Ewood Park was abandoned towards the final stages due to a waterlogged pitch, forcing the game to be replayed in full in December, ending 1-1.
Town were then due to head to Pompey in January, but a frozen pitch at Fratton Park saw that game postponed. The rearranged fixture, set for early February, met the same fate due to excessive rainfall.
Revealing the financial toll it has taken on Ipswich, Ashton has pushed for pitch regulations to be introduced by the EFL, forcing clubs to invest a certain amount into their playing surface every year.
“You’d love to be able to tell the fans everything that you’re doing,” he told BBC Radio Suffolk. “We made a representation to the EFL’s board directly after the Blackburn postponement.
The Blues saw their first trip to Ewood Park abandoned due to a waterlogged pitch (Image: Ross Halls)
“I think this needs to be regulated. We regulate the floodlights, we regulate so many things within our stadium. But the key element, which is the pitch, isn’t regulated.
“You have clubs that haven’t invested in the pitch in decades. You have clubs like us or Watford, Coventry and Bristol City who invest heavily in the pitch. You have some clubs who have dual sports on the pitch.
“I think we need independent advisors who can take control of this. We had a full EFL conference with 72 clubs last week and this was raised as an agenda item. It’s now something that’s on the Football League’s agenda.
“The madness of this is, in the three fixtures you’ve just talked about, that’s cost the football club hundreds of thousands of pounds. We’ve got no recalls to get that back.
“Those hundreds of thousands of pounds also sit against our Financial Fair Play [FFP] position, so that’s money we can’t spend on players. It’s utter madness.
“It needs to be regulated. I think chief executives need to be protected, because at some point, a chief executive will go to the owner and say, ‘look, we need to invest half a million on the pitch’, to be told to spend it on the players.
“The reason it has to be regulated is to enforce specific minimum standards, minimum investment on an annual basis on the pitch. I think you’ll see that come.”