Birmingham manager Wayne Rooney admitted he was disappointed not to claim his first win since taking charge at St Andrew’s as Town came from two goals down to grab a 2-2 away draw, but took plenty of positives from the game.
Marcus Harness netted in the 79th and 89th minutes to level for Town, Jay Stansfield and a Cameron Burgess own goal having given Rooney’s side, who had lost his first three matches in charge, a commanding lead.
"Obviously disappointed in the end with the result having been two goals up, but there were a lot of positives in today’s game, which I was really pleased with,” Rooney said.
"Physically, we’re trying to improve and get better, so we can have that intensity for longer.
"But once we started fatiguing, Ipswich started getting control of the game and pushed us back and we just couldn’t hold on. Disappointed in the end, but a lot of positives for us.”
He added: "We had some good opportunities on the breakaway as well and maybe with a little bit more care in the final third, we can do a bit better.
"But, to be fair, I can’t fault the lads. The one thing I can fault is that some of the lads who came on off the bench didn’t do enough.
"If you’re not in the starting XI, I make this point to players all the time, you need to be ready to come on.
"The lads worked really hard to put us in the position we were in and when you come on off the bench you need to do better than a few of us did. That’s something for us to look at and improve on.”
What was he unhappy with from those subs, work-rate? Quality on the ball? "The quality on the ball, we have to all improve. That has to get better throughout the team.
"A big focus this week has been without the ball and how we play really front-footed and make it difficult for Ipswich.
"But when you make changes and you bring players into the game, they have to pick that up.
"And especially when Ipswich were starting to get a bit of control and give us that energy to continue doing what we were doing and I just felt there were a couple of players who didn’t really do that for us.”
Rooney felt Town’s subs, Kieran McKenna having made four changes just after the hour mark, made an impact on the match, not least Harness with his two goals.
"Their subs made a difference and I felt ours didn’t,” the former England skipper continued. "Sometimes you can look at that from different ways.
"Ideally, where I want to be is that I’m making changes for tactically reasons, not necessarily for physical reasons.
"But the way I want them to play is different, it’s more front-footed and it does take a lot more energy to do that. We’re constantly trying to build that up to get to a level where they can do that throughout 90 minutes.”