Town boss Mick McCarthy was pleased with his side’s second half performance during their 0-0 home draw with Huddersfield, feeling two incidents late on were crucial in a game either side could have won.
"I was pleased with the second half and it hinged on two chances and two saves,” he said.
"Didzy’s still saying the ball didn’t go out when he crossed it and Dougie got tripped and it would have been a penalty.
"I couldn’t see it so I’m relying on Didz’s opinion and if I was Didz I would say it hadn’t gone out as well, like everybody else when you’re playing.
"But the two saves, Gerks made a great save in the second half when the freekick dropped to Huws. And their keeper kept their point when the ball dropped to Didzy.”
McCarthy agreed that it was a game of two halves: "It was. I made a change at half-time and brought Didzy on.
"I feel sorry for Tommy Oar because it turns out he’s got concussion. I didn’t know that when I took him off. I knew he’d been affected by the ‘collision’. It was a nasty bang, I’ve just watched it again.”
Might the keeper have been sent off for the challenge? "I wouldn’t know what would happen today, no idea. If I can’t say anything pleasant about them I’m not going speak about them at all.”
Regarding full debutant Oar, McCarthy added: "He didn’t play well but neither would anybody else if they were concussed. He quite clearly didn’t have double vision as he would have said something to us, but it really did affect him.
"He got a right smack in the hooter. And as it turned out it quite clearly affected his performance.”
The Town boss was able to take a number of positives from the match: "A clean sheet is one. I think the reaction in the second half was another one, we played well having not played so well in the first half. But sadly we were a man down really with Tommy [Oar concussed].
"And the fact that I thought we were back to being competitive. We certainly weren’t going to allow them to play and I thought some of the players who had tough starts, like Tommy Smith, I thought he then won that battle with Ishmael Miller having had a tough start. So there are positives to take out of it and the clean sheet is certainly one.”
He says on another day the Blues might be celebrating all three points via McGoldrick’s late chance: "If you don’t do all the basic stuff, you’ll get beaten regularly.
"On a different day, last season maybe, we’d have scored that and would have eked a 1-0 out of that and that’s why we ended up in the play-offs.
"That’s just not happening for us at the moment but it will happen if we do all the other things and get back to basics and scrapping and tackling and blocking and working hard.
"That’s not to say we haven’t been working hard but perhaps not stopping the opposition as much as we should have done.
"If we get back to that then maybe those 0-0-ers will turn into 1-0-ers or 1-1s will turn into 2-1s in our favour again.”
Why does he feel the Blues have failed to maintain their early season form which saw them top the table? "Maybe the teams looking at us and the way we play is a big thing.
"I got asked in August ‘Are you going to be suffering from a hangover?’ and quite clearly we weren’t. Maybe teams thought we would be but we weren’t, we went a steamrolled teams.
"And I think others have looked at us then and thought ‘We’re going to have to be on our mettle playing against Ipswich and be at our best’.
"There are two teams in it, not only us, and I thought Blackburn did it to us two weeks ago but it’s not happened today, it’s a been a real tough Championship game and probably a fair result but either of us could have won in the last 15 minutes.”
McCarthy, who opted not to make significant changes to his team, was pleased with the reaction from his players: "I am because the reality is that it's us conceding goals that’s been our real achilles heel and we haven’t conceded one.
"And there were times Bez [Christophe Berra] and Tommy [Smith] got in a mix-up and Nahki Wells got in but he hooked it off the line. The first bit’s not great defending but the second bit’s brilliant defending.
"Jonas slipped but they got back and blocked it. Somebody else had another slip on this side, got free and Bez got in and blocked it. That’s great defending.
"With the chances that they got, they made up for, they repaired the damage and so if anything it was giving goals away that had been the problem and we defended goalkicks and corners really well today against another big side. So, I’m pleased with the lads who played.”
The Blues boss says he’s not inclined to react to chants from the crowd with fans calling for the introductions of McGoldrick in the first half and Kevin Bru in the second.
"I’ll just tell you that the more they shout probably the less chance they’re going to come on,” he added.
"I’m not being that belligerent about it but if anybody thinks that Freddie Sears and Brett Pitman aren’t good players, I think they’re a really good partnership.
"You know what, the ones that came on had the chance to be the hero today, didn’t they? Maybe on another night it might be Brett and Freddie that come on to be the hero. Dougie headed one over the crossbar and it’ll be Dougie’s turn.
"It’s the same everywhere I’ve played since I’ve been a kid. There are always a couple who get it in the ear hole and they have favourites, and that won’t change.
"If Didz’s ball didn’t go out we’d have had a penalty and that was Dougie in the box. I thought he was great.
"So when it’s going badly I’m not really the flavour of the month and the players who are playing aren’t flavour of the month. We’ve just got to change their taste buds again, haven’t we?”
McCarthy felt his back four repaid his faith by recording the Blues’ third clean sheet of the season: "I think you’ll find that over the course of my career I’ve known who the best players are and who the best defenders are and who the best frontmen are and have a pretty good idea of what I’m doing.
"It might not always look like that sometimes when the results go the wrong way, but everybody has a different team in their head, everybody. When it’s going badly the knee-jerk reaction is ‘Let’s change it all’.
"Then, of course, when you do that if that goes to mush you have to change it again. And if that goes to mush you’ve got to change it again.
"The back four that played there, apart from Jonas Knudsen - who was excellent I must add, apart from his slip, and he was playing against one of the better wingers in the league - were fantastic last year. They’ve not become bad players.”
McCarthy was also pleased with Daryl Murphy’s performance from the bench and also with his other subs, David McGoldrick and Larsen Touré: "I pleased with the response from the subs who went on. I was delighted with them all.”
Huddersfield manager Chris Powell agreed with McCarthy that a draw was a fair result: "I think so, on the balance of play.
"We started off very well, we thought there would be a response from Ipswich’s last performance but we more than matched that.
"At half-time I said to the players that I thought we should be a goal or two up because we had very good situations which, especially away from home, you would like.
"But Ipswich made a positive change at half-time bringing David McGoldrick on, so we knew we would have to be quite resolute in our defending, which is something we had spoken about all week because we hadn’t had a clean sheet all year. It was about time we got one and we knew we’d have to earn it today and I think we did.”
Regarding James Vaughan’s late red card, he added: "It’s put a bit of a dark cloud on what’s been quite a decent day, a decent performance.
"He’s let himself down because he’s worked very hard to get back and he was close to possibly starting. I thought I’d bring him on for 20 minutes to see where he’s at.
"You manage the game, there were two or three minutes to go, it’s our ball. He shouldn’t even get involved.”