Town full-back Ashley Young admits the Blues have not hit the levels they know they can reach following the 2-2 draw with Derby County at Portman Road.

Kieran McKenna’s side remain winless in their opening four Championship matches of the season and almost fell to back-to-back defeats until substitute Jack Clarke equalised with almost the last kick of the game.

Clarke’s dramatic spot-kick, which came in the 16th minute of stoppage time, salvaged a third point of the season for Town, who are 20th in the early season standings heading into the first international break of the season.

Despite letting a half-time lead slip, Young believes the Blues are getting closer to finding the performance that would see them end their run of matches without victory.

“I think you’ve got to take the positives out of it, the character for us to get back into the game,” he said. “On a different day, if we go 2-0 up it’s a totally different game and we walk away with three points.

“I think if there was a couple more minutes then we would have got that third goal. We take the positives out of it, go into the international break and then we come back again fighting as we’ve shown.

“We had that resilience and that grit and we need that at times. Especially when we’ve come out of the Premier League, teams are going to come and sit behind the ball. We have to break them down and we’ve got to be patient.

“Especially in the first half, we were on top and if we got the second goal it would have been a different game but we definitely take the positives out of today.

“It’s coming, it’s there. We haven’t been able to get to the level we know we can get to, but we’re not far off at all.”

Young says he and his teammates had no doubt that Clarke would score from the spot when he stood in front of the North Stand with the clock deep into three figures.

“I did,” he said. “We’ve got confidence in all the boys that are going to step up and take the penalties in crucial moments. He showed massive character to step up at the end, it wasn’t easy.

“He had a few of the Derby players trying to put him off, but he was cool, calm and collected like he always is when he’s practising penalties at the training ground. We all had confidence in him that he was going to score.”

Town’s opening goal came from a corner and had Young at its source. Jacob Greaves met a deep delivery after it was missed by visiting goalkeeper Jacob Zetterström.

The former England international believes set pieces can have a huge role to play in the Championship, and knows the Blues have the right personnel to ensure they can become a dangerous threat.

He said: “I think they play a massive part. We work on them quite a bit, Mark [Hudson] has got us dialled in pretty much every day and we know what the opposition are doing.

“The main thing for us is worrying about what we do. If the boys are able to put the balls into the areas that we set to do it, we know we’ve got people who are going to get on the end of it. Luckily today, Greavesy was there to get on the end of it.”

On Town’s penalty claim where George Hirst was booked for simulation, Young added: “I’ve not seen it back. If Hirsty’s claiming it and the boys around him are claiming it, then I think it’s got to be a penalty.”

Much has been made of Young’s age since his arrival on a free transfer from Everton last month, with the veteran wideman still playing at the age of 40 and made his full league debut against the Rams.

On his own fitness, he said: “My first 90 minutes since the end of last season, I felt good.

“I love playing here in front of the fans. I think we could have turned that into even more of a positive with a win. The fans have been fantastic, it’s down to us now to go and put the performances on to get the wins.

“I’ve got every confidence in this group of boys that we can go out and get them.”

Town now head into the first international break of the season sat fifth-from-bottom in the Championship standings ahead of Sheffield United’s visit to Portman Road in a fortnight’s time.

Young knows it is still very early in the season and believes the break comes at the right time for manager McKenna to dial into training with the Blues’ new signings who have arrived late in the window.

“We go into the international break now, the boys will go away and then they’ll come back and the ones that are staying will train and do everything that we have been doing,” he said.

“As long as we keep a focus on what it is we have been doing and just build on that, we’ll turn those draws into wins.

“He wants two players for each position. It’s competition for places and that’s down to us players as there can only be 11 players in the starting team, so you want to make sure you give everything day in, day out.

“It’s that work ethic that we’ve got here, working hard. You know that you’ve got to be on your toes all the time. This international break we’ll use to bed in the new players, I’m sure they want to get started straight away.

“Everybody’s looking forward to it, today we’ll take confidence out of getting a point and the character we showed and resilience to get back in the game and we’ll look to build on that.”

Photo: TWTD

victorysquad added 19:54 - Aug 30 Have to say i really really like what Ashley Young brings to the club. Really hope we can develop him as a coach, just oozes class and has fantastic experience for the younger players to learn from.
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Saxonblue added 20:42 - Aug 30 Great to have Ashley at the club - so much experience and fantastic fitness levels
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Tractorboy1985 added 20:56 - Aug 30 Referee aside.. we were so poor.. early days and relationships need to be made like our previous TEAM! That’s why we got to the promised land.. no prima Donna’s.. players who gave their all for ITFC! I think we’ll be ok but I need to see more of a TEAM spirit.. it goes a long way! Derby were a bunch of spoilers.. we are going to get that at PR this season sadly… teams will be delighted with a point.. it’s up to us to break them down! Frustrating times admittedly at the moment.. we’ve been spoilt.. Kieran needs to build a new team! What does annoy me is that he sticks to the system and changes personnel.. Amorim like.. maybe sometimes play 2 strikers?? Long way to go.. league table after 4 games is not pretty.. time for McKenna now to earn his contract and build our new team to challenge to win this league! COYB

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