Town boss Mick McCarthy felt Tuesday’s 1-0 home loss to Stevenage in the EFL Cup detracted from Saturday’s 4-2 opening day victory over Barnsley in the Championship.
Despite the game being in the lesser of the two cup competitions and in front of a 20-year low Portman Road crowd of 6,858, McCarthy felt the result took something away from the weekend win, secured in large part due to Grant Ward’s remarkable second-half debut hat-trick.
"It did on Tuesday because we got beat,” he said. "Only 6,000 there? Only 6,000 people had turned up and paid their money to come and watch us win? I think that’s disappointing, personally.
"It doesn’t take those three points away, it’s doesn’t take those three goals away that Grant scored, it doesn’t take the four goals from our score, but it does take away from it because we got some goodwill going, a good feeling going and we wanted to continue winning, and we didn’t.
"I’m not bothered [about the atmosphere or if half the ground was closed off], we’ve still got to play. There’s no excuse. And, as I’ve said, Stevenage played well, let’s not get away from that.
"But if you’re saying it didn’t take away from Saturday, I’m telling you it did for me.”
As a result of the defeat and performance the Blues boss cancelled the players’ Wednesday off to get them back to Playford Road.
"We came in and the ones who played didn’t train and the ones who didn’t play did train but did little or nothing,” he said.
"We’ve got a few who are still suffering from the game, so we’ve not done a great deal. It’s been more working on heads and how we do things.
"We had a meeting and showed them how we don’t do and showed them how, hopefully, we will do it.”
Regarding Andre Dozzell’s half-time withdrawal McCarthy says that shouldn’t be viewed as a slight on the 17-year-old.
"Not at all,” the Town boss continued. "If anybody thinks it is a slight on him that’s wrong, I’m certain he doesn’t and nobody else really should.
"The guy that came on for him, David McGoldrick, is a pretty decent player here at Ipswich.
"It wasn’t really happening for Dozzer and I wanted to go to 4-4-2 and see if we could win the game. As it turned out we didn’t.”
McCarthy has won only two cup ties since taking over at Portman Road in November 2012 - one of those after extra-time - but is keen now to put Tuesday’s disappointment and cup frustrations firmly behind him.
"We’re playing Brentford on Saturday,” he said. "We’ve had three points from one [Championship] game.
"You might like to ask me about [the cup] but I’ve moved on. I dealt with it yesterday and there’s bugger all I can do about it now.”