Town boss Kieran McKenna felt the Blues’ 0-0 draw at Stoke City was a hard-fought game and was able to take positives from the display and his team’s other festive fixtures.

McKenna was pleased with the way his side got into the game after the home team, who ended the match with 10 men following Jordan Thompson’s 67th-minute red card, had started positively.

“It was a hard-fought game at 11-v-11,” he said. “Stoke had some momentum at the start of the game and got a few set pieces and had the crowd with them.

“But I thought we took the sting out of that really well, we stayed with the ball, stayed brave against the opposition press and the opposition crowd and I liked the way we were in that phase.

“And I thought throughout the first half then we started to take control of the game and created some really good situations for ourselves. But weren’t quite able to execute the touch or the last little bit to get a goal.

“And again, I thought we came out well at the start of the second half and the game was in a good way for us.

“Of course, the red card changes things for both teams. It’s an advantage to us in many ways but at the same time, at times it can work the other way and Stoke changed, they brought on an extra defender, defended their box really well, dug in really well to get a point and made it really hard for us to create the goal.

“A hard-fought game, lots of good things about the performance, I’m sure [Stoke boss] Steven [Schumacher] will be happy with the way the players saw the game out with 10 men and we all take a little bit of a deep breath before the next game in the league.”

Regarding the red card, a second yellow for trying to encourage replacement referee Thomas Bramall to book Conor Chaplin following a foul, McKenna said it hadn’t come up in the dressing room.

“It’s not been mentioned, to be honest,” he said. “There hasn’t been any chatter about it. I didn’t ask the boys about it.”

Thompson, like McKenna a Northern Irishman and a former Manchester United youngster, was booked in the first half for a high challenge on Kayden Jackson, which might well have been a red.

Quizzed on whether he felt that was the case, McKenna said: “I thought it was a hard-fought game. Jordan’s a tough-tackling player, I’ve known him for a long time.

“I haven’t seen the incidents back, at the time I thought it was a hard-fought game, I didn’t see anything out of the context of a battling game, to be honest.”

McKenna was pleased to have a number of his regulars back in the side: “That was good, that was important. Wes [Burns] and Broady [Nathan Broadhead] felt better and having Samy [Morsy] back, although we now miss him for the next two [having been booked for the 10th time this season].

“We have a squad, I thought the players who came into the team did ever so well. In today’s instance, I thought George [Edmundson] was a credit to himself at centre-half, more so for how he’s trained in the last couple of months when he’s been waiting for his opportunities and supporting his teammates and keeping himself ready.

“And I thought he stepped into the team and especially in a difficult period in the first exchanges, he stood up really strong, was composed all game and was excellent.

“Axel [Tuanzebe] did really well coming into the team in a different role than he has played with us in his early time at the club.

“I thought there were some good individual performances. We showed some good qualities as a team again in a tough away game and we picked up back-to-back clean sheets and showed again that we’re a really hard team to beat and we’ll compete with all the good teams and big clubs in this division.”

Town were without centre-half Cameron Burgess, who has joined up with the Australia squad for the Asian Cup, much to McKenna’s annoyance.

“That’s something the federations can do, I’m not sure I agree with it,” he said. “They can declare a player ineligible from two weeks before the tournament starts and that two weeks started today, and that’s what they decided to do.”

While Morsy returned today, Town will be without their skipper for the home game with Sunderland and trip to leaders Leicester following today’s yellow card.

“It’s his 10th yellow,” McKenna said. “It was always going to happen at some point. When you get five early and then eight and nine early then you know the 10th one is going to come.

“It is what it is, we’ll try and find the best way possible we can to do without him for those games.”

One man who was still absent was left-back Leif Davis and McKenna isn’t sure how long the former Leeds man might be out for.

“We don’t know,” he said. “He’s got a calf strain, so he wasn’t particularly close for today. It’s not a huge tear but whether it’s one week, two weeks, three weeks, we can’t say at this time really.”

Asked his reflections on the Christmas period in which the Blues failed to win a game but were beaten only once, the Blues boss said: “There were positives. We’ve had a serious run since the start of December, if you go back to the fixtures that we had.

“Of the seven games that we had in December, we won three three, drew three, lost one and picked up 12 points.

“It’s a really healthy return and some really good performances in there as well. Of course, the four games over the Christmas week, we would like to have won one, everyone’s worked really hard, players, staff, supporters have travelled together and worked hard over the period.

“So, of course, we would have liked to have got a win from at least one of those games.

“On the other hand, there have been some good things about us as a team. After losing the game at Leeds, we’ve come back with good resilience, shown that we’re hard to beat.

“Played really, really well against Leicester, I thought there were lots of good things about us today. Clean sheets and proving difficult to beat are positives to take.

“I think if you just factor off the Christmas period, it’s a disappointment to not win one of those games, but stretch that out slightly longer, you could certainly say we’re showing some really good things are a team and we’ve picked up a healthy number of points as well and shown we’re hard to beat in a really, really difficult run of games.”

Following the Christmas period, Southampton in third are now only three points behind the Blues.

Asked if there should be some perspective with fans perhaps looking over their shoulders apprehensively, McKenna said: “Of course there is, look at the clubs that we’re looking over our shoulder to and that should be enough for everyone to be pretty proud of themselves.

“We’ll just focus on ourselves. We know that we’ve had an incredible first half of the season after an incredible second half of last season and put ourselves in a position in the table that no one would have expected.

“But that’s never been our focus. Our focus has just been improving. It was initially to compete in this division and then implementing our style of play and keeping improving.

“We’re on that journey. Of course, it’s made harder when you have week like we’ve had with a lot of injuries and illnesses all coming at the same time, but from there showing resilience and finding a way to keep accumulating points, even thought it’s one rather than three. That’s something we can take a lot of positives from.”

Photo: TWTD

Nomore4 added 18:34 - Jan 1 We positively need to move some out and bring some new in ASAP.
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BurleysGloryDays added 18:35 - Jan 1 Second half of the season will be tough going, we’ve got the best man on the case. Super KMK
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SussexTractor added 18:36 - Jan 1 We were toothless to be honest with few shots on target. A new striker is the priority for January.
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carlo88 added 18:50 - Jan 1 ^^ @ SussexTractor. 3 points clear of 2nd in our first season back in the Championship. You sound very disappointed.
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SussexTractor added 19:17 - Jan 1 Carlo88…I’m delighted that we are second, but current form of 3 draws and 1 defeat means that we won’t be second in February, without a striker with similar ability to George Hirst
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sohamblue74 added 19:32 - Jan 1 Sign up Sinclair Armstrong and Jay Stansfield please. SA an upgrade on Ladapo. JS an upgrade on Jackson. Plus a young mobile tough tackling CM. Sheaf or Whiteman would be useful or a prem loanee perhaps.
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Bert added 22:20 - Jan 1 Totally agree with KMcK about the points we got from a seriously tough December. Of course we need reinforcements but for goodness sake a bit of perspective is needed.
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johnwarksshorts added 06:41 - Jan 2 It's 2nd Jan, 2nd in Championship, who would have put us in such a high position before statrt of season? Let's just enjoy the ride while it lasts and hope it continues for the 2nd half of season. We have a classy manager and great owners and Back room staff. Over to you Mr Ashton to get some more bodies in and really make promotion achievable.
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planetblue_2011 added 09:57 - Jan 2 Can’t say there were many positives to take from the game. We need to learn to shoot more outside the box or even inside the box if we can get a decent cross in.
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