Town boss Mick McCarthy was frustrated at conceding “two really poor goals” in injury time to allow Brentford to claim an unlikely 2-2, but prior to that he felt his side were “outstanding”.
"It’s an annoying one that,” the Blues manager said. "We should have won the game. We’ve conceded two really poor goals.
"There were chances at both ends, I think we had the majority of them, we scored two and should have put it beyond doubt. If you don’t do that, you don’t concede two goals like that.
"If you don’t score again and you don’t put it beyond all reasonable doubt, then make sure you lock the back door and we hadn’t done.
"The difficulty is that I’m really delighted with the way we played, I thought we were terrific and it’s a shame that three minutes just annoys you and pisses you off so much it can blight [that].
"It can do, but it won’t because I thought we were outstanding, as an away performance I thought that was excellent. We just can’t let that happen again. But I thought it was a really good performance.”
The Town boss had no complaints about the five minutes-plus of added on time: "There was a lot of time stopped for Kevin, there were enough substitutions, we had a goal.
"The stoppage time was fine. Nothing to do with that, we’ve just allowed them to score when we shouldn’t have done.”
Does he put the goals down to a lack of concentration? "I think it’s a bit simplistic just to say it’s one thing. When they get one goal, a team gets momentum.”
He continued: "Bart says he was impeded, I’m not so sure, not that much. I just think when you’ve got that you can almost smell it coming with that last corner kick but we should have defended it better. It was poor on our part.
"But it was good on theirs. They put it in and they had Johnny on the spot running in to score, so it takes two teams to create a game, doesn’t it?”
He added: "Forty-five [matches] to go and I’m sure I’ll be sitting here feeling the same again some time. I’m sure their coach has come in and they’re ecstatic, it’s like a win for them. But they’ll all know they’ve had a bit of a doing, except for the last three minutes.”
McCarthy says the disappointment of the result won’t be allowed to linger: "I’ve said to the players what I’ve said to you - for 90 minutes we’ve had an outstanding performance, I’m delighted with them. For three minutes we haven’t, so I’m not going to let that [dominate]. I don’t do that.
"I’ll be in tomorrow morning to watch the game and when the lads are in I’ll be fine. We’ve got to go and play on Tuesday and then on Saturday again. Roll on May!”
Kevin Bru went off injured after the break and McCarthy isn’t yet sure of the extent of his injury: "It looks like he’s damaged his hamstring, how severely I don’t know.
"I’ll find out tomorrow. I won’t know until it settles down. We’ll get him looked at and whether he goes and has a scan I don’t know.”
Teddy Bishop missed the trip with a similar problem: "He’s got a bit of a tight hamstring as well.”
Brentford head coach Marinus Dijkhuizen admitted his side were fortunate but felt they were knocking on the door towards the end of the match.
"We put a lot of pressure on and took a lot of risks, but I think we got better and better in the game, the chances were big, but we couldn’t get a goal,” the Dutchman said.
"And finally Andre Gray scored and then you think it’s too late, but there are three of four minutes because they added five minutes, which is normal.
"We were a little bit lucky of course, but finally we deserved the draw, but it was a good last few minutes.”
He felt his team tried to play too much like the Blues in the first half: "I was disappointed about our game. We created good chances but we were a bit restless on the ball, not enough patience on the ball.
"A little bit the same game as Ipswich, kick and rush and they are better at kick and rush because that’s the way they want to play and they’re physically stronger.
"I mentioned in the break that they should be more patient on the ball. But after the break it was 2-0 and it was difficult to play and you have to switch to Plan B and C and finally we’re very happy with the draw.”