McCarthy: We Deserved More and Berra Goal Should Have Counted Tuesday, 13th Dec 2016 23:01 Boss Mick McCarthy believed the Blues deserved to have taken something from their 2-1 defeat at Birmingham and felt Christophe Berra’s late goal was wrongly disallowed. “I think we deserved more out of that,” McCarthy said. “I don’t think we’ve played badly at all. We didn’t start well in the second half and the second goal is disgraceful to give away. “They put good balls in the box but we’ve got to defend them better and, of course, their other one, the penalty, came from a corner kick as well. “But I do think we had a perfectly legitimate goal at the end, I have to be perfectly honest. “I haven’t got a clue what the referee said about it, but I’m going to find out. I think he’s given it against Christophe Berra, but Ryan Shotton doesn’t jump. He doesn’t jump, Christophe jumps, he backs into him and, of course, Christophe is on top of him then. "It’s interesting, I didn’t see too many fouls given in our box against them.” It’s not the first time Town have had a goal disallowed this season with perfectly good efforts ruled out at Wolves and against Norwich within a few days of one another in August. “We have,” McCarthy reflected. “But whinging about it won’t do any good because it doesn’t change it. “I’ll go and see him and tell him my opinion. I can’t really say a lot but I guess I can say I completely disagree with the decision. “And actually, I should apologise because I appealed for a foul on Christophe Berra near the end on the edge of the box [when Berra looked to have been fouled by Shotton as he headed down a Tom Lawrence cross] and I’ve had a look at it and it wasn’t a foul, it was GBH.” While Town may have been unfortunate with the disallowed goal, the Blues were the architects of their own downfall in their own penalty area. “We need a bit of luck from somewhere, but we’ve got to make our own luck,” the Town manager admitted. “We didn’t start game in the second half, we’ve given a goal away and that’s made it a real uphill battle. And that’s just what we’re doing at the minute. “They’re the mistakes we’ve got to [cut out]. I’m not going to rely on anybody, certainly not in a black kit, that’s going to give us anything. “And we shouldn’t have to, we’ve got to rely on ourselves and giving the second goal away, we didn’t get a chance to start. The subs have been great, I thought the subs made a real impact.” But as so often in recent matches the Blues had given themselves a mountain to climb with the penalty - “It’s handball, it’s a penalty” - and Michael Morrison’s free header. “It’s no good, is it? We should be pushing for a win,” McCarthy continued. “We give a penalty away, we give another goal from a corner away. “If it’s 0-0 and we’re pushing for a win, that would be a lot better position for us and that’s not happening at the moment.” McCarthy admits those sorts of individual errors have been all too common in recent weeks and says they’re not easy for a manager to rectify. “I’m not passing the buck at all but I don’t think as a team we’ve played badly over recent weeks at all but, wow, we’ve given some soft goals away,” he said. “I made a comment saying it’s a lot easier to stop that happening, rather than coaching people to put the ball in the net. That would appear that’s proving to be contrary to what I think. “It’s difficult for a manager to address, it’s fine details. Their penalty comes from a freekick from us. The first ball’s not won. The second ball is not really contested. It ends up with Chambo having to foul their centre-forward on the halfway line. “They knock a ball into our box, which we don’t deal with. It hits Grant Ward on the way out, I think it misses everybody and hits him and goes for a corner. “Then they have another corner off that because they kept it on top of us. We didn’t win the first ball when the second corner comes in and Reg has tried to chest it but it’s hit him on the chest, then hit him on the hand. It’s tiny details.” Among the positives was another impressive display from Tom Lawrence: “Tom has been excellent, but I’m going to be ultra-critical. I was raging on Saturday at Didzy’s freekick that he put over the bar. “It’s a wet pitch, if it’s just rolled to the side of the wall, old school and he smashes it at the keeper, it skids and it gets a deflection. “And it was the same this evening, he had a great opportunity to smash it at the keeper. It’s a wet skiddy old night and we put that over the bar. But other than that, he’s been different class.” McCarthy says Jonas Knudsen missed out with a tight hamstring but was impressed with Myles Kenlock’s performance in his place. “He had a tight hamstring, but I thought Myles was different class, to be honest, he did really well,” McCarthy added. “I’m really pleased for him, and with him.” Birmingham's assistant manager Mark Sale was pleased that his team bounced back after their 4-0 drubbing at Newcastle at the weekend and a 3-0 home defeat to Bristol City in their match prior to that. “It was a bit of a scrap out there, we thought the game would pan out how it did," he said. “Last home game we were disappointed with the performance, then we go to Newcastle and we know it’s always going to be difficult there. “We got back to basics a little bit tonight. We knew what Ipswich were about and how they would play and it panned out exactly like that. “The two centre-halves stood up to a lot of aerial balls, I thought they competed well. [Jonathan Spector] has come in having not played for three or four weeks and I thought he settled in really well. "It’s pleasing. After two bad defeats stopping the rot is important. We always thought it was going to be a scrappy game, we had to really dig in. “There wasn’t a lot of space on the pitch, it wasn’t great football although we did play some in patches. “They are on you, second balls, you don’t have time, so it was a little bit scrappy. But I thought once we got the first goal there was only one team who would go on to win.”
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