Blues boss Paul Jewell admitted that he is envious of the pace in the Crystal Palace team after the Eagles beat Town 1-0 at Portman Road on Saturday. Palace wide men Wilfried Zaha and Sean Scannell were a constant threat for Dougie Freedman’s side.
Jewell said: "It obviously is a concern for us and Crystal Palace caused us problems. We’d all like pacy players in the team but we haven’t got a lot of them at the moment. It’s a concern, but I was concerned five weeks ago [during the winning run].
"Crystal Palace came and got men behind the ball and we just didn’t move the ball quickly enough. We didn’t have a lot of movement, we didn’t have options. In the last few games we’ve had options on the ball.
"We got in-between people, but against Palace it was a bit like playing in straight lines and we don’t want to go back to that, that’s the easy way out. It was a bad day at the office.”
The Town boss says he hasn’t been thinking that the team was the finished article in recent weeks with work having continued to keep the loan players at the club and to bring new signings to Portman Road: "There are 33 games left, a ridiculous amount of games left.
"It is a league which is relentless and we haven’t been sat here thinking our team is perfect, we know we need improving and we’re trying to improve it all the time.
"We are in contact with the players we already have but we’re also looking for players not just for this season but beyond. We’re looking to improve the whole team, the whole squad.
"Whether we’d won or lost to Palace, my focus and my forward thinking wouldn’t have changed, we’re always trying to improve.”
Town’s full-backs Carlos Edwards and Aaron Cresswell were pinned back by the visitors’ wide threat on Saturday and Jewell believes plenty of other sides will have similar problems against the Eagles: "There won’t be too many players who play against Crystal Palace’s [wingers] who’ll get forward because they are as quick as anything in this league, and even above.
"Crystal Palace had won three out of their last five away games [before Saturday]. They went to Brighton and won 3-1 and you can see why because they’ve got pace in abundance and they’ve got a good team. I thought Southampton were good earlier in the season, but Palace look good as well.”
While the Blues manager says that while it’s a shame to see the six-match unbeaten run come to an end, he feels it was inevitable: "We’re Ipswich, we’re not Real Madrid and I don’t know when we last went on a run of five or six games unbeaten.
"We’ve enjoyed it but we’ve had a setback. I don’t know a team in the world that doesn’t have setbacks. We’ve had bigger setbacks this season and bounced back. Hopefully we’ll have a good week’s training and look forward to Millwall.”