Town boss Mick McCarthy bemoaned “Keystone Cops” defending after the Blues were defeated 5-1 at Reading.
"We contrived to give five goals away,” he said. "Well, I can’t say we gave them all away, they played well, but I thought we had plenty of chances in the game as well, certainly in the first half.
"And even at the start of the second half Brett Pitman gets a chance, and of all the people for it to drop to, he usually hits the target. And they scored within minutes after that.
"The third goal was really the one, that was car crash football, Keystone Cops, whatever you want to call it. It was a fabulous finish in the end, but it should never have got there.”
Regarding the mix-up between keeper Dean Gerken and Cole Skuse which led to the third goal, he said: "There’s a bit of discussion going on between him and Skusey. I’ll have a look at it.
"It doesn’t matter actually, who is to blame, I’m not going lay blame at anybody for any of them. That’s not the point. They’ve gone in and behind closed doors I’ll have a look and we’ll decide then.”
He added: "The goals that we’ve conceded, the first one is a poor clearance, they end up getting it in the box and our centre-halves generally deal with that. I have to say, Sa showed good movement and scored a good goal.
"I’ve talked about the third goal. The second goal, we don’t concede that normally, but it was another good goal by them, it is if it’s one of our players who scores it. But I’m chewing at our defending.
"And at the end of the game, I’ve played in games like that myself, the third’s gone in and then the fourth’s gone in and you’re all over the place and you’re just getting a chasing.
"You’re still running around but you’re not getting anywhere. It’s a sobering defeat that one.”
It’s been a long time since Town have conceded as many goals in a game, you have to go back to McCarthy’s first month in charge, November 2012, when the Blues lost 5-0 at Crystal Palace and 6-0 at Leicester.
As someone who takes pride in the way his team defends, he admits it’s not easy to take such a heavy loss.
"It hurts me a lot,” he said. "I’m sure it hurts all our fans and all our players. That’s the worst it’s been since the dark ages of Crystal Palace away and Leicester away almost three years ago. I thought we’d banished all that.
"I’ll take a bit of responsibility because I put a really attacking team out, maybe we were wide open, too open. So, yes, we had loads of chances, but so did they. I’ll have to look my own part I played in that as well.”
He added: "I’ve just been speaking to the lads for about 20 minutes and I’m not sure I said a great deal because I’m dumbstruck by that performance.”
The Blues are quickly back in action at Leeds on Tuesday, which McCarthy says is now a more difficult prospect: "They were always two tough away games and it’s made the next one even tougher still.”
Reading manager Steve Clarke said: "It was a good counter-attacking performance, but we did score the first goal as well, which opens the game up.
"It was a great cross from Nick Blackman and a terrific header from Orlando Sa and that gave us a platform to go one up.
"We defended really badly for the equaliser, which isn’t like us because we’ve been defending really well.
"I thought Ipswich in the first half put us under more pressure than any team has this season, they caused us problems at the back, which not many teams have done up to now.
"So, it was important for them to show better resolve and character in the second half and I think we did that.”