Blues boss Paul Jewell says he will look to sign a holding midfielder over the summer to try to take the pressure off his defenders next season. The Town manager feels his backline is often left exposed when opposition sides break, particularly at Portman Road as was the case in last night’s 3-3 draw with Middlesbrough.
Jewell said: "It’s about being in the right areas at the right time. We’ve not really got that holding midfielder, that defensive midfielder.
"The team’s done smashing, I’m not here to rip them apart because we’ve had a bad night defensively, but we need a big, strong holding midfield player who is going to make it easier for our back four lads.
"If we’re going to play that system we’ve got to have someone who is going to sit in there and stop the flow of attacks. Certainly at home, it doesn’t seem to happen away from home.
"When we’re at home, we’re quite open, we want to attack, we want to get forward and that system at times leaves us vulnerable to counter-attack with the personnel we’ve got, as well as they’ve done."
Up until Boro netted twice in a minute just before half-time, the Town boss was happy with how the game was progressing: "At 1-0 I thought we were comfortable, we’d played some good stuff. Young Carson again looked quite lively but we needed the second goal. Then, defensively for 15 minutes just before half-time we went to pieces.
"I think we panicked a little bit. For the first goal we didn’t close their throw-in down, Damo slashes at it, it hits the bar and all of a sudden the whole atmosphere of the game changed.
"I thought we’d been quite comfortable. But let’s be fair to their two front players. The lad who came on, Andy Halliday, and Scott McDonald caused us problems all night. Give them a bit of credit.”
Meanwhile, left-back Mark Kennedy looks to be a doubt ahead of Saturday’s game at Bristol City after coming off with a tight hamstring towards the end. The veteran Irishman is likely to be replaced by Darren O’Dea, who took over from him last night.