Town boss Mick McCarthy felt his side deserved to win their 0-0 draw at Blackburn and was pleased with their performance, despite the Blues now having gone five games without a goal or a win. The Blues manager admits that Town are going through “a tough time” in front of goal, while his backline has picked up their fourth clean sheet in six.
"The way we’ve been at Blackburn for the last four visits, we’ve been awful so I would have taken anything from Blackburn,” admitted McCarthy, who is still to win a game in October as Town boss.
"We needed a performance. I thought I got that, I thought our fans got that performance.
"I’m disappointed, I thought we should have won the game, to be honest with you. Jason Steele got the man of the match and probably deserved it.
"Could we have been better, more clinical? I don’t know. But I don’t know what they’ve really contributed in the second half, certainly.
"I thought we were the better team and if any team was going to win it, it was going to be us.”
Are some of his players disappointed not to have taken their opportunities? "I think players always feel like that. I always say to them, I never think I’m more disappointed than them. I have a collective disappointment for them, for the team, for the club, for fans and players - I was a player - are quite insular, you’re disappointed for yourself and your team-mates.
"Of course they’ll be disappointed, but that’s the hardest thing in the game, putting the ball in the back of the net, but if we play like that more often than not we’ll win games.”
Despite the improved performance, fans who weren’t at the game might judge the match on the continued lack of goals.
"I can’t do anything about that,” he added. "I would really love to get our fans back on side with me and with the team and be excited by us.
"That was a start today. We’ve had more shots, more crosses, more attempts at goal than we’ve had in the last two or three games probably.
"And I’ll hear everybody screaming, ‘He should play 4-4-2 all the time’. Yeah, I know, good one.
"Maybe I’ll be the judge on what tactics we should use because we’ve had chances whatever we’ve played in the past.
"I can’t do anything about people who haven’t been here. I would hope that the ones that were will go back and say, ‘They played well today, we enjoyed it, should have won, but didn’t’.”
He says switching to 4-4-2, Freddie Sears joined Leon Best - who McCarthy believes is getting better with every game - up front, made the game more open: "They were two up as well, so it did leave it pretty wide open.
"I thought, except for the first 10 minutes when I thought they started well, we were equally as good as them and better than them in the second half.
"But every game’s different and I haven’t had two strikers to put up front anyway. You can pick the bones out of it, I’ve had one striker and one striker who has come in and not had a pre-season, and he’s done particularly well, Besty.
"So, to put two up and get one injured, then I’d be knackered and I couldn’t do it again. That’s really the first time I’ve had two fit strikers for a while.”
Regarding the five-game goalless run, he added: "I think there have been plenty of others that have gone through that, teams. I think the problem is the more you make it a problem the bigger it becomes.
"I remember David McGoldrick going 11 games without scoring and I didn’t drop him, I didn’t worry about him because I knew he’d get them. Maybe others were scoring. We’re just having a bit of a tough time, but we believe we’ll get out of it.”
At the other end of the field, the Blues’ defence has now kept four clean sheets in their last six matches.
"And then I’ll get that that is maybe how I operate and I don’t at all," McCarthy reflected. "Predominantly through my career I’ve been 4-4-2 with two flying wingers.
"When I was at Sunderland, when I was at Wolves, when I was with Ireland, whether it was Duffer [Damien Duff] and Kev Kilbane, that’s the way I’ve played. And I’d like to do that on a regular basis, but it has changed a bit, the game.
"Nevertheless, and I said what we’ve got to try and do is create chances, which we did, but still maintain that solidity because if you lose that it doesn’t matter. If you concede and you’re playing catch-up it’s very difficult.”
Blackburn boss Owen Coyle believed a draw was a fair result: "I thought it was a very hard fought Championship game, as we expected.
"I thought we started the first 15 minutes well, looked to get our passing game going, looked to get wide and create them a number of problems in the first 15 minutes."
He added: "I don’t think there were many clear-cut chances in the game. Did we create clear-cut chances? No. That was my disappointment.
"I think we got to the final third in wide areas many times and normally we’ve got players that can produce a little bit of a spark, a little bit of creativity in that respect, and we didn’t do that.
"On the other side of that, that’s our first clean sheet of the season, which we’ve been craving for a long time and they showed a real character and a real resilience to stand up and deal with a lot of aerial balls.
"You want to win every game you’re at home and we all understand that.
"The important thing I think that we showed is that we’ve learned a number of lessons. There was a real resilience, a real mentality to get that clean sheet.
"Could we do better in terms of being more aggressive in terms of our early passing and then quicker and sharper? Absolutely.
"But how they stood up to a real test I think in terms of defending your box, I think they stood up to that well.
"I think if we can continue, as always it’s stating the obvious, but clean sheets have so much importance because we do believe there’s goals in the team.
"If we can get that platform with the clean sheets, it’ll result in instead of one point being three points because we know we have that, so that’s something we have to continue to aim."