While Town are unbeaten in their last 11 matches, goals haven’t always been easy to come by, leading to five of those games ending in draws, however, manager Kieran McKenna says that’s not just down to the strikers.

The Blues have scored 12 goals in that run, securing six victories but the displays in the draws with Cheltenham, Morecambe, Oxford, MK Dons and Portsmouth were worthy of more than a single point.

“I think it's a little bit of everything,” McKenna responded when asked about the lack of goals. “I don't think you can put it down to one thing and I think each game is probably different.

“The Oxford game was maybe different than last week's game [the 1-0 home victory over Plymouth]. In the Oxford game, we were rampant at 1-0 up and we were carving through them and had great chances to counter-attack and break through the pitch.

“Last week was a little bit more controlled. We kept the ball a little bit more in the second half. We didn't create loads and loads of opportunities because we didn't really feel the need to.

“We felt like it was a game that we could control in possession a little bit more and keep our shape. So I think each game is different, and it's hard to pin it on one thing.

“We would like to have scored more goals. I think that's not just the strikers, I think we want goals from all over the pitch. We've had a couple of winning goals from Sam Morsy, who's probably our fifth-deepest player maybe on the pitch in terms of his general starting position. So that probably typifies what we want to see.

“We want goals from midfield, we want goals from the wing-backs, we want goals from the players between the lines and we want goals from the central striker, and we want goals from set plays from our centre-halves.

“So I don't think it's fair or right to just say it's one position. I think it's for us to just keep improving as a team and keep improving the goal output from every position and from every different phase of the game.

“In certain games we were facing a low block and we needed to score goals against a packed defence, and other games or other stages of games we were 1-0 up and the other team was leaving a lot of space and we needed to kill the game on the counter-attack.

“In other games, we were struggling to break the door down, but were getting a lot of set plays and we needed to be able to score one of them, and that might have to be a centre-half or it might have to be a defender or a midfielder who scores.

“So for me the focus is on keeping developing us as an attacking threat and keeping developing all the players in all the positions in our goalscoring and goals-creating threat, and the centre forward is just one part of that.”

Town, ninth, five points off the top six, have six games left in order to secure a place in the play-offs. It seems likely the Blues will have to win most if not all of their remaining fixtures.

Given the quality of the recent displays, that appears not impossible, if the Blues can find a way of winning the games they’ve drawn too regularly in the recent past.

“I think there's a lot of substance in our performances,” McKenna reflected. “And I think, yes, sometimes you can be on a good winning run or an unbeaten run, but have come very, very close to losing games or have had a number of not so good performances.

“We've managed to get over the line but at times that feels less repeatable. At the moment I think we've hit a really consistent performance level over a good period of time and when you've done that for a good period of time, you feel that you're capable of continuing to deliver consistent performances.

“Results in football are a strange thing. The winning run that we're going to need and the unbeaten run that we're going to need to the end of the season I think would be highly abnormal, at any level. So we can't worry too much about that. We can't control that random things can happen in a football match.

“One of our best and most dominant performances with our highest expected goals and lowest expected against was Morecambe and we dropped points. And there are probably not that many things that I would do differently if we had that game again.

“So we can't control the results, we can't control the results fully. All we can control is the performances.

“I think the group has good belief that it can deliver consistent performances because we've done that over a good period of time.

“And a focus is just going to be on delivering the next performance and hope that it leads to a result. And if it leads to a result, then we'll go on to the next one.”

Photo: TWTD

Suffolkboy added 17:34 - Apr 1 This man reduces the complicated to the simple with his open , effortlessly articulate communication – and he's interesting too ! COYB
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Linkboy13 added 18:35 - Apr 1 I think Keiran is choosing his words very carefully and not wanting to rattle too many cages. We did have enough chances last week to have won comfortably.
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NthQldITFC added 18:59 - Apr 1 I have so much respect for, and belief in our bright young manager already.
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dunkleberrydog added 08:25 - Apr 2 Not only am I liking the football more, I'm really liking what McKenna is saying and the way he is deliberately going about his job. We are headed in the right direction….
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dirtydingusmagee added 08:49 - Apr 2 no waffle no bull, no riddles. no ive done this ive done that ! good record since arriving, happy players ,happy fans. Cant believe im talking about ITFC manager. WE HAVE OUR MAN. Regardless of making playoffs or not [ i cant see it happening] the future is looking good imo.
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bobble added 11:47 - Apr 2 too much talk....keep it simple mate
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