Blues wideman Wes Burns says he’s tried yesterday’s brilliant trivela finish many times in training without ever finding the top corner as he did against Coventry City at Portman Road yesterday.
Burns’s brilliant strike, his second goal of the season, six minutes before half-time was the highlight of yesterday’s 2-1 home victory over the Sky Blues, manager Kieran McKenna hailing it as his favourite goal in his almost two years at the club.
"The boss has just hammered me for not using my left foot,” Burns laughed when speaking to TownTV following the match. "I’ve tried it so many times in training and it’s not come off.
"The space opened up on the inside, I cut inside and I thought I would use the outside of my foot this time.
"They were covering the line quite well, I think they’d obviously done a lot of work on me and Chappers [Conor Chaplin] and blocking off the one-twos down the line.
"The space opened up on the inside and I’ve tried it so many times in training and it’s not come off but I thought I might as well try it in a game. Brilliant.”
Town once again got off to a positive start, George Hirst netting the opener from Nathan Broadhead’s excellent through ball in the sixth minute.
"We needed to come out intense, similar as Wednesday night [the 3-1 home victory over Millwall] and I think the lads did that right from the off.
"We scored the early goal, Hirsty scored a good goal and then we kept our discipline and they didn’t do too much in the first half to cause us any troubles.
"We knew they were a good team, we knew we had to be compact in the middle of the field, we knew they would try and play through us a little bit, more direct. But we stuck to our principles and it was a great result.”
Regarding Hirst’s goal, he added: "To be fair, I didn’t really see it. I got knocked over [by Jake Bidwell] before the goal, so I didn’t really see too much but I’m pretty sure it was a good finish.
"It was all fine, just an off-the-ball collision as I was running through, so I didn’t actually see the goal, but all sweet.”
The Wales international continued: "Our attacking threat was very good and we stuck to our principles and our usual game plan where we clog up the middle and make teams play on the outside of us.
"They’re a very direct team that play through the middle and want to break the lines. We stagnated that and it was a very balanced game.
"We knew they would come out in the second half, they were 2-0 down, the were a wounded animal at that point, and there would be a reaction.
"They made a few subs and changed a few things tactically, their press was better in the second half and it stopped us playing out so easily.
"That’s natural, we were holding onto the 2-0 lead, but they weren’t really offering loads of threat. It would have been nice to keep the clean sheet but these things happen.”
Burns was delighted that the Blues picked up six points from their two home games this week following on from the disappointment of last Saturday’s 2-0 loss at West Brom, only Town’s second league defeat of the season.
"To go back to back, Wednesday-Saturday in the Championship is tough, the physical demand is top, especially after the West Brom result, everyone could have been ‘here we go, maybe we’re having a little bit of a blip’, but that’s not the narrative within the camp
"We set up for every game totally differently and we want to win every game we go into and the back-to-back wins are a sign of that.”