 Thursday, 2nd Dec 2010 13:59 Town boss Roy Keane felt his side had created enough chances to have beaten West Brom more comfortably in Wednesday night’s Carling Cup quarter-final at Portman Road. In the end it was Grant Leadbitter’s 69th minute penalty which saw his side through to a two-legged semi-final against Arsenal. Keane said: “In terms of clear-cut chances we should have won the game comfortably. I know Murph made a good save from the boy’s header in the second half, but Tamás blocked one on the line from Jason and we felt the penalty in the first half should have been awarded. “We’ve not created that many chances lately. We’ve not been capable of opening teams up, but we seemed to do that against West Brom. “It’s strange, when you play Premier League teams sometimes you get that extra bit of time that you don’t get in the Championship and that probably suited one or two of our players. “But we never took our chances. Their keeper’s made one or two good saves, for David Norris’s miss the keeper actually made an unbelievable save with his head from two yards.” The Blues boss admitted that he was getting concerned prior to Leadbitter’s spotkick: “We were sitting there wondering if it was going to be one of those nights. If you remember the league game against West Brom here last year, we were 1-0 up and missed chances, Tamás Priskin missed a great chance in the middle of the goal and then West Brom scored in injury time. “We couldn’t relax. We were never going to have an easy 15 minutes, were we? We were never going to win 2-0 or 3-0, that would be too easy.” The victory saw Keane reach a semi-final for the first time as a manager, but the Irishman wasn’t looking to bask in any glory: “I’m more pleased for other people. People keep on about myself, but it’s all about the players and the supporters. They are the most important things, it’s not about my feelings because a manager’s career will be up and down anyway. “We had to give supporters something to shout about because we’ve let them. We keep talking about turning points but since I’ve been in the job we’ve had moments where we’ve thought ‘is this it, is this where we’re going to kick on?’ but I still don’t think we’re strong enough to do that until we get some of our injured players back.” West Brom boss Roberto Di Matteo made nine changes from the team which won at Everton at the weekend but Keane says last night’s Albion side was the same as the one which had progressed through the earlier rounds of the Carling Cup: “They’ve been doing that throughout the competition and I did that when I was a manager in the Premiership. You have to use your squad of players. “That was the same squad of players that went off to Leicester and won 4-1. There were one or two changes, the young boy came in at right-back, Steven Reid, an international player, also came in. “I wouldn’t take too much away from my team. West Brom have a good, strong squad and the manager’s entitled to rotate his players and he has every right to do that because his priority, like a lot of teams who have been in the Premier League for a year or two, is to build their club and stay in the Premiership.” There were only 11,363 at the game, but Keane, who at that stage hadn’t heard that the Blues were facing Arsenal in the semi-finals with the first leg at home, says this isn’t something unique to Town: “I think the cup competition doesn’t seem to be gathering many supporters, not just here but gates generally have been down. “Instead of talking about the supporters who weren’t here, let’s talk about those who were. 11,000 travelled and looking at the weather it’s not ideal and hopefully a few more might come back for the semi-final. If the first leg’s at home!” The Town manager says that for the moment thoughts of the tie will be put on the back burner - “January’s a long way away yet” — but admitted that he was relishing the prospect of facing Arsenal, having enjoyed his battles with them as a Manchester United player: “Happy days.” Keane now wants to take Wednesday’s performance into Saturday’s live Sky game against Swansea (KO 12.45pm): “The league is our bread and butter and we need to get back up that table. “Getting to the semi-finals is a real bonus for the club, but that’s all it is - a bonus. We’ve got to get back to winning league matches and hopefully we’ll do that when we have another tough game against Swansea on Saturday.” Meanwhile, Blues striker Jason Scotland says he regrets leaving the Swans for Wigan in a £2 million deal in the summer of 2009, his Premier League career with the Latics having failed to take off: “I had to take the chance — but I do regret leaving. “I think that’s the same for others. You speak to other guys and whether it’s now or two years down the line I think they’d miss what we had [at Swansea] because the standard of football we played was so amazing. “I enjoyed the football, my family loved it in Swansea, my kids loved it, I never really wanted to go — but when the offer came in I needed to go and prove myself.” Scotland says his summer move to Town was a chance to re-establish himself: “I wanted to prove myself again and I was prepared to go back to the Championship to do it. “The challenge is there for me personally and to get the team up into the play-offs and pushing for the Premier League. If we do, then Swansea will be there too. They are still playing that good football.” Current Swans striker Craig Beattie says he knows nothing of reports linking him with the Blues earlier in the season: “It was just hearsay. I wasn’t even back fit when the rumour started, I’d been training two or three days after a three-month injury so I was bit flattered it was being mentioned." Saturday's match is not expected to affected by the continuing bad weather.
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