George Burley praised Matteo Sereni for his match saving role for Town against Helsingborg at Portman Road last night. The Town keeper saved Town's unbeaten home European record as the Swedish side had the better of the chances.
Burley said: "We were grateful to our goalkeeper. He made some quality saves. They will probably think they should have had the advantage but he showed some phenomenal agility and he has been outstanding since he came to the club. I suppose it's a better scoreline than when we played Torpedo Moscow in the last round here. A goalless draw is better than 1-1 and we always knew it was going to be tough against Helsingborg, a team that beat Inter Milan last season, and a side that defends in numbers and breaks quickly."
Nanne Bergstrand, the Swedes' manager, agreed that a 0-0 scoreline, while not ideal for Town, does probably favour the Blues: "I feel that 1-1 would have been better for us than 0-0 which perhaps puts Ipswich in a stronger position. We closed down Holland and Magilton in the midfield and maybe that was the key to the match as we didn't give them much time on the ball."
England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson was present at the game and told Bergstrand that he thought his side had the better of the evening, although the Helsingborg manager was disappointed his side didn't score: "I was very pleased with the way we managed to play the match tactically, but I was disappointed that we couldn't score. I think we had enough chances to score at least one goal and I would have been more happy with 1-0 or 1-1 - that might have been better. It was important for us, when we came to play a Premier League team, that we were very tight in defence. We knew the first 15 minutes would be very, very hard and they had a lot of corners in that period. But after that we came into the match just as I thought we should. You have to be tight when you play these kind of matches against English teams and although we are pleased it is still only half-time in the tie."