Boss Roy Keane felt his side deserved their 2-1 home victory over Leeds at Portman Road. The Town manager joked that he had told winning goalscorer Tommy Smith, a late inclusion after Darren O’Dea was injured in the warm-up, that he was destined score.
Keane said: "I think it was a good game, a good result and a good performance. The players have done well and I think we just about edged it.
"We gave away a shocking goal but the players responded well and we scored two good goals ourselves.”
The Blues boss confirmed that Darren O’Dea was again suffering with his ongoing knee problem and praised Tommy Smith for stepping in at the last minute: "That’s why it’s important your players are mentally ready and it’s no surprise that Tommy ended up scoring. I said to him beforehand that it would be no surprise if he scored a goal. That happens in football.
"We scored two good goals today and we could have been more clinical when we were breaking two against one and three against one.
"Leeds caused us problems as you’d expect, they’re a big strong team, they’ve got lots of energy and it was a good result for us.”
Keane felt both his centre-halves were to blame for the Leeds goal: "The issue was Tommy and Gareth going up for the same ball. But you make mistakes in games and I’ve no problem as long as they’re honest mistakes and the players responded well.”
The Blues boss confirmed that Smith and O’Dea have both been withdrawn from their international squads due to their back and knee injuries respectively.
Leeds manager Simon Grayson wasn’t too concerned at the break despite being behind to Jason Scotland’s goal, Town's first in the opening 45 minutes in the league this season: "I thought we were quite comfortable to be fair. Even though we were down at half-time, I didn’t think our goalkeeper had had too many saves to make.
"We looked solid as a team, we had a good shape about us, which we needed to have after the other night. There was a response from the team, we just needed to have a little bit more belief at half-time that we could get back into the game.
"I think we’re finding in this division that any time you make a mistake you can get punished. We had possession of the ball for the first goal and we gave it away and the next thing it’s in the back of the net.
"But we got back into the game and we looked like we were more than capable of going on to getting a result, but obviously a few things which happened which didn’t help us to get the result we needed.”
Grayson had no argument with Alex Bruce’s red card: "I think both were probably bookings. I think he was a little bit stupid in terms of the second one - if you’ve already been booked you’ve got to stay on your feet because if you mistime a tackle you can get sent off. And obviously that contributed to our downfall.
"I don’t mind teams opening us up when we’re doing to 10 men and passing the ball around and scoring that way, but we defended a corner and the lad had a free header where we could quite easily have dealt with it.”
The Whites boss felt there was an infringement on Tommy Smith’s goal: "I think Richard Naylor was fouled by Wickham but the other lad was going to head it anyway. We could have got a freekick, but there was no one marking the other lad when it went over Richard’s head.”