Town boss Kieran McKenna felt the Blues’ 2-1 friendly defeat to West Ham was exactly the challenge required at this stage of pre-season.

Kane Vincent-Young nodded a late goal for Town Kurt Zouma and Daniel Chesters had given the Premier League.

“I thought it was a good work-out, I really appreciate David [Moyes] bringing a strong team down here,” McKenna said.

“It was a really good game for us, a good challenge playing against some top-end Premier League players and I thought it was a really good competitive game, exactly what we’d want for this stage of pre-season.

“We’re starting to get closer to kick-off time, so we need to sharpen up our competitive edge especially and I thought the game had that.

“Certainly from our point of view it was a good exercise, lots of positives to take and some things for us to improve on.”

The Blues were pushing for an equaliser towards the end which was appreciated by their supporters at the whistle.

“Hopefully, I think that’s for the players, credit to them,” the Northern irishman continued. “Great turnout on a Tuesday night for a friendly. Great support and it was really nice and noisy at the end and I think everyone appreciated the way the players competed to the end, tried to get a late goal, that would have been nice, but everyone knows that’s not the important thing at the moment.

“I thought it was a good atmosphere and a good night for getting the competitive juices flowing.”

Asked what he learnt from a game which was very different to how most of their League One encounters are likely to pan out, he said: “I think you take things from the quality of the opposition, you can see some of the things that David has instilled so well at West Ham.

“In their culture they’re prepared to sacrifice without the ball, they work ever so hard without the ball.

“There were even times in the game when [Michail] Antonio and [Pablo] Fornals, two top Premier League players and two internationals were prepared to do the hard yards and run and shield and stay connected.

“You take things from the opposition, whether that’s Arsenal or West Ham tonight and you can see why they’re successful teams and why they’re at the top end of their league and why West Ham have had a successful couple of years under David and really progressed well as a club.

“For us, we want to challenge ourselves against that level of opposition as often as possible. I thought some of our combinations, some of our patterns were really good, but also they have that extra little bit of physicality to recover if you don’t get it just quite right and they can put a little bit more pressure and recover a little bit faster than League One players can do at times.

“So you have to be right on it, you have to be really, really good to get through the pitch. At times it was and at other times they were that little bit sharper and won the ball back from us and we had to defend well to stop them scoring.

“A good mental lesson to see the good things that West Ham bring and to learn from them as a team and a really high level technical, tactical game and obviously physically tied into that is what makes it so hard technically and tactically because the players are generally of that higher athletic level.”

Town had George Edmundson, Kayden Jackson and Tyreece John-Jules involved for the first time having been injured towards the end of last season, while Lee Evans continued his comeback from his knock.

“Massive for us, especially, George, Lee and Kayden, who played in the second half,” McKenna added. “Three massive players for us, add a lot of qualities that we’ve missed at times and great to have them back in over the last couple of weeks and I’m sure they’re just going to get stronger now.”

McKenna felt last week’s Loughborough University training camp had had an impact: “Very good. A really good week, good facilities, well looked after, everybody enjoyed the week. Worked really, really hard. I thought we looked fit tonight, I have to say.

“Even in the second half before the subs, I thought we were getting stronger, the players didn’t want to come off a lot of them, they were hungry to go for more minutes and felt strong.

“We looked fit, we’ve worked hard, it was good to have everyone away and we enjoyed the camp.”

The Blues boss says his players will move up to playing full games on Saturday, either in the behind closed doors match at Crystal Palace in the morning or at AFC Wimbledon in front of fans in the afternoon.

“We’ll look to get the players 90 minutes on Saturday, that’s the idea of playing two games on the same day, so it’s going to be a busy day for me and a couple of the staff getting across London,” he said.

“The idea is to get as many as we can 90 minutes. Obviously some of the players might have physical limitations to do a bit less but where possible we’ll get as many to 90 as possible.”

West Ham first-team coach Mark Warburton felt it was important for the Hammers to claim the victory.

“It was important to us in terms of preparation, conditioning for the players, getting 90 minutes into senior players' and young players' legs of course,” he said.

“It is important to win these games. It is not about the results, it is about everything else but winning becomes a habit so to go to Servette [Switzerland] on Friday night and win that game, then come here against a very good Ipswich team well coached by Kieran and his team and get that result is important.

“It was a good evening's work with the focus now on the rest of the week and building up to the rest of the games.”

Regarding Town, he added: “I think they are a very talented team. I’m very impressed by their recruitment. Dom Ball is someone I know very, very well from the age of 11 and signed him at two or three clubs.

“They've had the likes of [Conor] Chaplin coming in there and [Freddie] Ladapo up top, the backs and the experience they have added with some youthful energy as well.

“I think Kieran and the staff deserve a lot of credit for that recruitment and with how they finished last season I think they will be very strong. I'm hopeful they will have a very good season ahead.

“I felt tonight there was an air of expectation, in a nice way. There was a genuine excitement around the ground tonight among a good crowd.

“But I think that expectation is something that the team and the staff will thrive on and enjoy. They have to earn that from the crowd and I think they have done that form the end of last season and the way they finished strongly.

“I know Kieran and his staff will work diligently to continue that into the start of the league campaign.”

Former Blues midfielder Flynn Downes made his first appearance for his new club and Warburton felt he did well.

“It was a big night for Flynn: a) he is coming to a Premier League club with a significant price tag attached to him for a young player. He is keen to impress the first-team manager and West Ham fans, of course. But b) he is coming back to Ipswich as well with all the added pressure.

“I thought he relished it and coped admirably with it. He will be better with the 90 minutes in his legs, that's for sure.”

Photo: TWTD

Bert added 22:21 - Jul 12 As expected, a wise and thoughtful analysis. Ok, we did not control the game but we did a lot of good things. Subbing 6 players all at once was a risk but it shows the depth we now have. Many reasons to be cheerful.
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Gforce added 22:30 - Jul 12 Kayden Jackson a massive player for us 🤣🤣
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PortmanTerrorist added 23:37 - Jul 12 Gforce presume you were not at the game. Yes Jackson has questions but the way our manager is using him and the way he threatened suggest he may well start up top. Time to back and stop criticising the players
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Linkboy13 added 09:35 - Jul 13 Yes some good signs for the coming season. Ndaba looks to have put on a bit of muscle during his loan at Salford and could be a surprise package for this season. Baggott now needs to do the same and come back bigger and stronger from his loan. He's got good composure on the ball but does struggle when it gets physical.
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