Town boss Roy Keane was delighted with Tottenham pair Jake Livermore and Andros Townsend after the Blues’ 2-1 victory over Leeds at Portman Road on Saturday. Livermore made his first start for his loan club and Townsend completed the first full 90 minutes of his spell at Portman Road.
Keane was pleased with Livermore, who created Jason Scotland’s opener: "He was excellent. You can see why he’s a Tottenham boy.
"That final ball today was very, very good and that will make or break what level you’re eventually going to play at. That was a good one and Jason finished it very well.”
The Blues boss had similar praise for Townsend: "Andros I thought was outstanding, getting at Alex Bruce a lot. He’s one of those old fashioned wingers, there aren’t many around at the moment.
"It was the first time I’ve kept him on for 90 minutes, we’ve been worrying about his fitness. I would probably have liked to have given Jake 60 or 70 minutes because he hasn’t played a full game for a while, aside from one or two behind closed doors matches with Tottenham.”
Keane says he gave Townsend no specific instruction to run at former Blue Bruce, who was red-carded for two fouls on the 19-year-old: "Andros doesn’t need any encouragement from me to go at full-backs. But if you’re on a yellow card and Andros is running at you there’s a good chance you’re going to get in a bit of trouble. I think it was a second yellow, I don’t think there was any doubt about it.
"I would never say to a player to attack a certain player to hope that he got in a bit of trouble. We’d hope he’d attack him to get by him to put a ball in the box. If you’re a defender, you wouldn’t like to play against Andros.
"We’re very grateful to have these two boys, especially with us missing Luke and Chuck. I’m grateful to Tottenham, just like I was grateful to clubs last year, like Sunderland when they were lending us players.”
Keane says he and his staff felt they could risk playing Darren O’Dea: "He’s had this knee problem since he went away with the last international squad.
"We thought we’d take a chance even though he’s not trained this week, but as soon as he went into the warm-up he said he was struggling and we had to make the change. That’s why it’s important that your players are ready. And it’s no surprise that Tommy scored.”
The Town boss was delighted to see Smith net the winner and feels he ought to be on the scoresheet more regularly: "I think Tommy’s the best defender at the club in terms of attacking balls and he probably should score more goals.”
Keane wants goals from all his midfielders and defenders: "You can’t be reliant on your main striker scoring all the time when you’re playing one up front. We want Jason to score double figures and he scored another goal today. It certainly wasn’t an easy finish, it was a great ball by Jake, but he had a lot of work to do.
"The way we play, I don’t think we’re a team capable of scoring three or four goals, so when we get these one or two chances we’ve got to take them. I’ll take 1-0 or 2-1 all day, I’m not interested in 5-4s or 5-2s, leave that for the other teams.”
The Town manager expected a close scoreline against Leeds: "I think it was always going to be a tight game. When we were 1-0 up Jason had a good chance, but we scored two good goals and it was a decent performance.
"It’s nice to get back into that top six. If you fall out of it you can drift and when we come back we’ve got some tough matches.”
Keane made no comment on the incident after the red card where Grant Leadbitter appeared to be struck by an object thrown from the Leeds fans: "I’ll leave the police to sort that one out.”