Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray was left bemoaning his side’s lack of a cutting edge following their 2-1 defeat to the Blues at the Stadium of Light.
One-time Town skipper and coach Mowbray’s side began the game on top but the Blues grew into the match and went 2-0 up through Nathan Broadhead and George Hirst before the home side staged a late rally, despite having been reduced to 10 men when Trai Hume was dismissed, with Dan Neil pulling a goal back.
"I think we respect that they're a decent team, they're well structured with good rotations,” Mowbray said. "They're confident and won a lot of games last season.
"For the first 15 minutes I think it was one-way traffic and then they worked their way into it.
"I think days like today, it's about cutting edge. I don't want to keep banging the drum but I do think we need more options at the top end of the pitch and I know the club are working really hard to do that.
"I just saw Kevin Phillips on the telly there and if you had him up front today, I think we win the game comfortably.
"That's football and we have to roll with it. Ipswich worked really hard and dug in. We put a great effort in, we just fell a little bit short.
"I think we're going to get stronger. If I sit here and think, seven weeks down the line we could have Ross Stewart playing down the middle, Bradley Dack behind him with [Jack] Clarke, [Patrick] Roberts, it starts to look pretty formidable with players then to come off the bench. I think you then score more than the one goal we did today.
"I think there was enough there today to say that we're going to be fine, we're working hard, the crowd were with us - they can see that the team are giving everything they've got.
"We feel a little bit hard done by with the sending off but the officials are being put in an almost impossible position at the moment. We'll have to get on with it and see how that irons out over the next few months.”