Blues boss Paul Jewell was delighted with his side’s performance as they progressed to round two of the Capital One Cup via a comfortable 3-1 victory over Bristol Rovers.
Jewell said: "It’s a strange feeling having a cup tie on a Tuesday before the Championship starts on Saturday but it’s a meaningful game and it was very important at the start of the season.
"Bristol Rovers, to give them credit, they came here and made it difficult for us. We had lots of the ball but I felt we didn’t do enough with it quickly enough in the first half, I thought we passed it but we didn’t really go anywhere.
"We dominated the whole match, if we’re being honest, but for all the possession we had we only had one goal to show for it at half-time. Second half, we created some great opportunities and we could have won by more.”
He was pleased with the way his team reacted to going behind: "It was an excellent goal, I think it was the second shot they’d had but we showed character.
"We’ve got a good spirit about us. We’ve got some good players, you can see that they’re enjoying passing the ball and playing the game at the tempo we want to play it at.
"But it’s easy for heads to go down after going a goal down after dominating possession, but we didn’t, we scored at a good time for us and in the second half we really took the game to them.”
Bristol Rovers manager Mar McGhee added: "My players take an enormous amount of credit from the game, we defended resolutely but we ran out of a bit of energy. Ipswich were always were always the more likely team to score.”