McKenna: Pride is the Overriding Feeling Saturday, 1st Oct 2022 18:45 Pride in his players was manager Kieran McKenna’s overriding feeling after his side’s 3-2 victory over Portsmouth at Portman Road. The second-placed Blues inflicted Pompey’s first league defeat of the season to move three points ahead of the Hampshire side, who are down to fourth. “A really good game, proud of the performance, proud of the players and the staff around the team for how they’ve been this week,” McKenna said. “Thoroughly deserved the three points. Complete domination of the first half and I think got what we’ve deserved for the last few weeks’ performances. “Good to get the win, I know it’s only three points but for the confidence within the group a good three points and now it’s moving on to Tuesday night.” McKenna admitted that Portsmouth scoring their second penalty equaliser was a frustration with his side having taken the lead at that stage. “It was a deflating moment, two completely individual moments not in the context of the flow of the game,” he reflected. “But really pleased with how we responded. We spoke about it a lot over the last couple of weeks about game management, about our resilience in difficult moments, little triggers and things that we need to do, and I thought that we did them very well today. “I thought we managed out the game after 3-2 very, very well and there were some things that we needed to look at as a team that we managed well and I’m proud of the response to the goals. “Of course you’re going to have setbacks, we want to have fewer of them, but it’s football and stuff happens. “Two penalties in a home game is quite bizarre, that’s three home penalties against us this season. “We’ve not had a penalty in 30-plus games, so it doesn’t make it easier, but that’s when you have to dig deep in your performance and in your spirit and we managed to do that.” Town haven’t had too many breaks this season but seemed to get one on their third goal with Kyle Edwards’s cross looping over Pompey keeper Josh Griffiths for Wes Burns to nod over the line. “I didn’t see it as that much of a break, to be honest,” McKenna said. “I thought it was really good play by Kyle, who stood a cross up and got it in the frame of the goal. Of course, the cross takes a nick. “Glad to come out on the other side of a fine margin. If we were talking about luck, I’d say we were probably due a few and if we were talking about decisions we’re still probably due a few, I don’t think today was a lucky win by any means, I thought it was a deserved win and it’s just nice to come out on the right side of tight margins.” The Blues boss was delighted that Burns got himself into the position to score: “Absolutely, and Kyle Edwards came on and did what he’s been doing in training, gave us that one-v-one impact. Went on the outside of a wrong-footed defender and stood a good ball up for the back post, so it was really good play and get forwards inside the frame of the goal and you’ve got a chance.” Having lost at Plymouth and drawn at Sheffield Wednesday having been in winning positions on both occasions, does McKenna believe it was an even more significant result? “It’s nice for the confidence and mentality of the group, definitely,” he admitted. “Sometimes you have to go through as a team negative experiences to learn from, but you also need some positive reinforcement and you need to know that when you’re doing the right things and you implement things that you do in training, you want them to feel that reward, and I’m pleased that they managed to do that. “So, proud of the three points, but we know there’s another big one coming Tuesday [when Cambridge are at Portman Road], but pride is my overriding feeling for the players.” Portsmouth boss Danny Cowley said prior to the match that “Everybody in the division anticipates Ipswich making the automatic promotion places.” And McKenna was presumably making reference to that comment when he added: “I think the longer that you’re here you get a really good feel for the culture of the club and the challenge of being at this club, and part of the challenge in this league is that you will have other managers and other teams who want to talk about Ipswich. “People will want to talk about Ipswich, people will want to big up our football club and downgrade their own players and their own football club for different reasons and some of those reasons are to create the false entitlement that we should be winning games and we should be dominating teams like Portsmouth and we should be winning this league. “And I think everyone in the club now needs to be clever enough, having seen that for the last few years, that it’s a false kindness and it’s a kindness to trick and to trap the football club into feeling that anything other than hard work is going to win us football matches and progress us as a club. “I think we have no right to dominate the first half as much as we did today. I think Portsmouth have an outstanding team full of Championship players. If you want to count the Championship appearances and the international caps between the two teams then you would find an interesting match-up. “One of the only players they have who doesn’t have Championship experience is one of the best young strikers in world football, in my opinion, in Dane Scarlett. “I think Danny’s done a fantastic squad recruiting an excellent team and a very deep and quality squad. “And we’ve got no right to dominate that first half as much as we did. We dominated it because how the players work every day and how they apply themselves and how hungry and humble they’ve been in their day-to-day work, and that’s the only thing that’s going to make us successful as a football club and it’s where we need to remain focused. “And as a club, players, staff, supporters, everybody, we need to understand that people will want us to think differently, people will want to downplay their own club to justify certain things, to justify styles of play, to justify approaches to games, to try and put themselves in position to get points from us. “We need to be above that, we need to be very, very clever, very, very hungry as a football club, to do as we did today, to stick together, perform, work very, very hard and that gives us a chance to put on the performance that we did in the first half, which then gives us the chance to go and win games.” With Ladapo scoring with his first touch and Edwards creating the third goal, McKenna was unsurprisingly pleased with his substitutes. “Yes, very pleasing,” he reflected. “We’ve spoken about it over the last couple of weeks, it was something we felt we needed to get back to, that real fresh impetus of the bench. “Of course, we’ve lost a few bodies from the bench and we really needed to get back to that big impact on 60, 70 minutes when we make a change, and we certainly did that today. “Freddie gave us a really good, fresh impetus in the game after Tyreece [John-Jules] had worked his socks off and put in a really strong performance. Freddie carried the baton and gave the centre-halves a different problem and scored a really good goal. “Kyle has deserved his minutes on the pitch off of how he’s been in training. He’s put together his best couple of weeks’ training consecutively by far in my time at the club and if you do that you deserve the chances and you deserve what comes your way, and he came on and showed us what he can give us as a team. “And Dominic [Ball] came on as well and I thought helped us control out that last part of the game, helped us manage the game well. “A good win for the squad, a good win for those who started, but showing the importance of the guys who are going to finish the game and help us get results.” Regarding fans holding onto the ball as Pompey sought to take quick throw-ins and goal-kicks in the latter stages, he added: “I think it certainly wasn’t any addition to us, it wasn’t something that we were looking to happen. “I understand it from the fans’ point of view, I’ve seen so many teams come here and try and waste time and take in the game, and we saw it today from the first minute. “So I understand the irony possibly of them trying to keep hold of the ball at the end, but the referee adds it on, so it wasn’t an addition to us and I was happy to see the ball come back in play. “I think that the league should look at more of a multi-ball system, I know the Premier League has looked at it and now I think this league should look at a multi-ball system. I think ball in play time and time-wasting is an important issue in the league, it’s not something that we look to do a lot as a football club, but I can understand the fans enjoying that moment today.”  Portsmouth boss Cowley was pleased with the effort put in by his players. “I will put my head on the pillow tonight and think the work ethic was good, the attitude of the group was good, the togetherness as a group was as excellent as ever,” he said. “I thought we showed resilience and determination. All those prerequisites you can’t give the players, I think our group have that. I will sleep tonight. “In terms of the performance, there are always areas for us to improve. When you play against top teams you get instant feedback, of course. “We go behind and suffer for the first half in a period and stayed in the game, we stayed together and showed that resilience I talked about. “We then found our goal and tweaked a couple of bits and found a better rhythm in the second half without being free-flowing. “It felt like we are in a good place in the game, respectful of the fact we were against a top team. “Then their [second] goal came from nowhere, which hurt us — then we responded, which is a really important quality. “They have a never-say-die attitude, you have to kind of kill us to beat us and we never know when we are beaten. “Then the third goal goes in and sometimes in football you have small margins, sometimes the break of the ball, and it wasn’t quite with us against Ipswich.” Regarding Town fans keeping hold of the ball in the latter stages, he added: “It was hard after that because we couldn’t get the ball on the pitch and got caught up in the emotion and frustration. “Instead of criticising the crowd, I would rather be really proud that we are in the third tier of English football and there are 28,000 here. It’s just an amazing achievement — and it doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.”
Photo: TWTD Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
You need to login in order to post your comments |
   Blogs 295 bloggersIpswich Town Polls[ Vote here ] |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.We in turn value your personal details in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
