George Burley has denied calling Robbie Savage a cheat in the aftermath of the Leicester midfielder's cheating which led to Matteo Sereni's sending off. Town have already appealed over the incident in which the Welshman collapsed dramatically to the floor in the manner of a dishonest boxer.

Savage himself refused to be drawn on the issue merely saying "Watch it on television" to reporters after the game. We have and it was clear there was no reason for Savage to fall to the ground in the manner he did.

On the subject of the afternoon's other sending off Martijn Reuser is defending Lee Marshall: "I was surprised when the referee showed Marshall the red card. For me it wasn't a red card. The guy was disappointed to have made the foul. He pulled me down but I never had any intention of getting him sent off, a freekick, possibly a yellow card would have been fine by me. The player was saying to me to get up, nothing more just usual football stuff. If he wants me to say something for him in his appeal I would be happy to. The referee was very poor in the game and that has been the case in the past couple of weeks. Perhaps they have been given new instructions from the FA to keep the game under tight control and blow the whistle for every little thing. It is frustrating because you can't play. It was the same for both teams."

Reuser felt that Town deserved to win: "Over the 90 minutes we were the better side. They didn't really create anything, but in the end we threw away two points."

Captain Matt Holland felt that Town should have been more aware as Leicester scored their equaliser: "There's no excuse, we should have known better, one man should have stood on the ball but it didn't happen and we were punished."

Marcus Stewart is a doubt for Town's UEFA Cup clash with Torpedo Moscow on Thursday. The striker was substituted two minutes from the end of Saturday's game appearing to hold his hamstring as he left the field.

George Burley, obviously concerned at an injury to his top striker, said: "It may have been a touch of cramp so we will have to see how he goes this week."

Stewart himself said: "Hopefully it will be all right for Thursday. I'm not sure if it will be but certainly that is what I'm aiming for. I'm looking forward to be involved. I want to play. It would be brilliant to be the player who gets the 100th goal in Europe for Ipswich. I have achieved a couple of landmarks — scoring the last ever hat-trick at the Dell and scoring 21 goals which beat John Wark's 20 goals as the highest in the top flight for Ipswich. While it would be nice to get a win under our belt at home, we are good away from home so winning may not be overly important on Thursday but keeping a clean sheet will probably be vital, especially with away goals in the second leg."

We'd like to take issue with a couple of Marcus' points. Town have already scored precisely 100 goals in Europe while Ray Crawford scored 33 First Division goals in our championship year of 1961/62 (Ted Phillips scored 28). The confusion over the number of goals in Europe may be caused by an own goal scored by Real Madrid during the home leg of the UEFA Cup first round match at Portman Road in September 1973.

Photo: Action Images

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