Town boss Kieran McKenna admitted the Blues’ 1-0 home defeat to Cambridge United was a step back both in terms of the performance and the result.
Dominic Thompson’s 56th-minute own goal claimed the points for the visitors who have now won at Portman Road on both their league visits.
The result means Town are now very much outsiders for a play-off place with only five games left to play and with the four teams above them having played a game fewer.
"A very disappointing day for everyone involved,” McKenna admitted following his first home defeat as Town boss. "I thought it was certainly our worst performance for quite a while.
"I thought especially in the first half the performance wasn’t at the levels we expect. I thought they dominated on the first and second balls all game.
"They were stronger than us on set plays in both boxes the whole game and we didn’t managed to get our in-possession game going in the first half.
"For a few different reasons, we didn’t get our positioning quite right from the middle of the pitch, we didn’t give ourselves the right options on the ball and I didn’t think we had enough aggression, enough penetration in our play to really threaten their goal.
"Having said that, I thought we rectified a few things at half-time, I thought we improved at the start of the second half, we were set up for a strong second half but what you can’t do in that situation then is give away daft set plays and give away goals on set plays, which we did and that makes the challenge a lot harder.
"It’s definitely a step back in terms of our performance and in terms of the result, the first game that we’ve lost for quite a while, so we need to learn from it.
"It’s obviously very disappointing at this moment but it’s a team which has developed well over the last period and we need to learn to use this as a big learning block and a big motivation and we need to move forward.
"Credit Cambridge as well, they’re a big, strong team and they came here after a good result weekend and they gave it everything they had. I thought their forwards were good under the long balls they put in and they ran harder than us on the second balls.
"I don’t think there’s been a motivation or an attitude issue that’s for sure, the players wanted to do well in the game.
"But teams like Cambridge in how they did it in the first half, they can give you a challenge. They can threaten your box with different sorts of play, so that was a challenge defensively the whole game that we didn’t stand up to well enough.
"In possession, we got some details wrong through the course of the game that didn’t make our options on the ball what we’d want them to be.
"As I say, I don’t think we were aggressive enough in terms of runs behind, aggressive enough in terms of crosses, aggressive enough in terms of getting bodies into the box.
"These are things that I think we have made good strides on and improved considerably on over the last month to six weeks especially, but I thought today was a step backwards.”
Regarding Cambridge, he added: "Their organisation was good, credit to them for that. They’ve been consistent with their shape all season but it wasn’t anything that we weren’t prepared for.
"They’ve been pretty consistent in that. Their set-up today was similar to how it was at Bolton away and MK and other teams that play in a similar system to us, so it was nothing that took us by surprise.
"Credit to them, they’re a very fit, physically fit and imposing and well-organised team, and I can’t say that they deserved to win the game but certainly they’ve put on a good performance and I think they’ll be happier with their performance than we are with our performance and they managed to get the goal and we didn’t.”
He felt the visitors’ game plan came off: "They were a threat on set plays all game. The first half was bitty. We didn’t managed to get a rhythm or a tempo to our play, the game was broken up and they managed to put more balls into our box than we would want them to be able to, more than any team has been able to do recently.
"I think that they managed to execute their game plan well. I said at half-time, I thought we improved, I thought we made some adjustments and I thought we started the second half well and I thought if we managed to keep our concentration in that phase of the game, it was there for us to go on and win it.
"We had a couple of good chances at the start of the second half and I thought the game was there for us to build pressure and eventually to get the goal.
"But we gave away a silly goal, allowed them to get that 1-0 lead and then it’s easy for them to break the play up and they did that well, it’s easy for them to take the sting out of the game and they had something to hold onto and credit to them, they did that well.”
McKenna had no argument regarding Cameron Burgess’s late disallowed goal: "I’ve seen it on the video just on the sideline and it looked offside. We got the first header but we had somebody in an offside position.
"From what I’ve seen, no complaints, the boys were feeling strongly there was a handball at the end, but I didn’t see that back on the video, so I’ll have to see.”
Once again Town were made to pay for not taking chances when they were on top.
"At the moment we probably need to play very well to win a game and we need to put together a very good passage of play to score a goal,” McKenna said.
"We’ve played very well and won plenty of games but we’ve also played well and drawn games and now we’ve played not so well and lost a game, and that’s an area that we need to really look at and investigate the reasons why and work on that.
"Certainly there are not many teams in world football who can play well every week. We’ve played, performance-wise, to a really high level consistently but it’s important that on the days you don’t play so well, you find a way to win games and we’ve managed to draw games and today lose games when we haven’t been at our very, very best.
"That’s clearly something for us to work on, to investigate and to very much have in our heads for the rest of the season and to go into the summer.”
Town now almost certainly need to win all of their remaining games to stand any chance of making the top six but even then that probably wouldn’t be enough.
"We need to beat Shrewsbury next weekend, we’re coming off an extremely disappointing result, we’ve lost at home with a fantastic support and we didn’t manage to produce what we needed to produce,” he said.
"I’m not thinking at all about other team’s results, I’m disappointed in our performance today and we’ll look to get that better for next weekend.”
Looking to the games to come, McKenna says Town have to treat them as they have their previous games, just looking to win each one as it comes.
"Exactly. It’s not the time to think about winning runs or anything like that, we have to each next match,” he said.
"We can’t control what the other teams do, the teams around us and the teams above us a lot of them have put together really good winning runs. We’ve put together a long unbeaten run with a good amount of wins, but at this stage not enough.
"It’s going to take a little bit of recovering from this one over the next day or two, but we’ll have a full week next week to get our minds focused and get ready for Shrewsbury and try and win that game and then see where we’re at.”
Cambridge head coach Mark Bonner was unsurprisingly delighted with his team's victory.
"It was a massive win for us, no doubt,” he said. "I think through the season we have found out how difficult games away against the top teams can be and let’s not make any mistake they are one.
"They are a brilliant side who are in incredible form, don’t concede many goals or chances, have so much movement in the team, so much rotation and really hard to contain them.
"We really wanted to get after them higher up the pitch but we had to accept we couldn’t and ended up defending in a really stubborn way and to limit them to the number of clear cut chances that we did takes an incredible amount of discipline and work ethic and I thought the players took that on incredible well.
"The first goal is always going to be key for us getting ahead and we have to manage the game a little bit and be stubborn.”