Town manager Kieran McKenna hailed the Blues’ 2-2 draw at Southampton one of the outstanding games since he’s been at the club with his side as close as it’s possible to be from confirming their return to the Premier League.

Wes Burns gave Town the lead three minutes into the second half, but the Saints levelled through Ryan Manning’s deflected free-kick 10 minutes later.

Cyle Larin gave the Saints the lead in the 80th minute before Jack Clarke equalised for the Blues with three minutes remaining, the Blues going close to winning it three times before the end.

A win would have seen the second-placed Blues back into the top flight, but now they will have to wait until Saturday with a victory over QPR at Portman Road confirming promotion regardless of results elsewhere with Millwall and Middlesbrough hoping for a Town slip-up.

“I thought it was an outstanding game,” McKenna said. “Definitely right up there with any game that we’ve had in my time here, certainly in the Championship one of the very, very top ones.

“I loved the large majority of our performance, I thought we were excellent. Of course, you give credit to Southampton as well, a very good team, they played their part as well.

“We would have loved to have finished it tonight and we were millimetres from doing it, but for me it was an outstanding performance with all the things that we want to be as a team.

“It shows huge growth over the course of the season to produce a performance like that in your third away game in six days and game 45 in the season and it shows the trajectory that we’re on.

“We didn’t manage to get the win that we really wanted but as much as we said a draw isn’t any different than a loss, a draw is in how we feel going into the weekend and how it came about.

“We look forward to the weekend now. We go into it with confidence and belief from the work across the season and how that was evidenced in the game tonight. We know it’s going to be tough, we know it’s going to take a big, big push from everyone, but we believe that we’ll find it.”

Asked whether his message to the players after the match was that if they put in the same performance on Saturday they’ll complete the job, McKenna said: “Along those lines. Pride in what I think was one of our best performances of the season, one of the games of the season and to do that in that context tonight shows fantastic growth as a group.

“From a character point of view, our reaction at 2-1 down, although we were disappointed to lose the goal, the reaction from there in this stadium with the momentum they have in their last home game with them needing the win, was incredible. And to be the team that was pushing and pushing for the goal was a great sign.

“I’m not going to lie and say I wouldn’t rather have had a rubbish performance and a win, but other than winning the game, I think the way the game panned out, our performance sets us into the weekend really well.

“We go there with big belief, we can look forward going into a home game now, we know for certain would have taken that scenario at the start of the season.

“We’ll recover well, we’ll prepare the game with a lot of humility and we’ll try and deliver one more good performance.”

Reflecting further on what was a pulsating end-to-end encounter, McKenna added: “I enjoyed it, to be honest. I had a feeling that I would do. Of course, at this stage of the season, you can’t separate it from the outcome and wanting to get the promotion done tonight.

“But I was really looking forward to the game as if it was November because I think they’ve rightly had excellent results and a lot of credit, and deservedly so, because they’ve been playing very well and on a great run, and I wanted to see us test ourselves against that.

“We’ve played quite a lot of the form teams in the division over the last run of games in an incredibly short space of time and I wanted to see how we’d come up against them tonight.

“And I really liked where we’re at as a team, our principles, our intensity, our character, I think it all stood up really well.

“Of course, the important bit now is getting one more win, but it’s also important that as a club, as a group we keep trying to improve and I think today showed a lot of improvement in the group.”

Terrific final days at Portman Road in recent seasons.

“We’ll digest this one first and we’ll not get too excited too early, but we know there’s the potential to have a really special day there and another historic day for the club.

“We know that’s the carrot there for us at the end, but our focus will be and needs to be just on delivering the performance and dealing with the game in front of us and performing as well as we can.

“We’ll recover from tonight and from tomorrow we’ll start to look at QPR, respecting them, giving the game full humility in our approach and just try and deliver one more big performance.

“And if we do that, then we’ve got a great chance to win and to have a really special day at home in front of our families and in front of our supporters.”

Quizzed on how he felt when a Clarke effort in the 89th minute struck the post, then Saints keeper Daniel Peretz and went wide, it was actually a 94th-minute effort from the same player which was saved which had McKenna’s heart in his mouth.

“It was probably the other one, to be honest, the left-footed one,” he recalled. “The toe-poke, I didn’t really have a good view from where the dugout was, but the other one on his left foot, you can’t hit it any better and it’s an absolutely world-class save.

“I think factually you cannot come any closer than that. But it’s over 46 games, this is a really good point tonight and a really good performance and we look forward to Saturday now.”

Regarding top scorer Clarke, who took his tally to 16 for the season, McKenna added: “It was a great goal off his left foot. He’s having a strong season. He does well when he starts and he certainly has super impact off the bench.

“He had a big impact tonight and unlucky really that he wasn’t the absolute match-winner.”

Asked whether he thought the game was a credit to the Championship, the Northern Irishman said: “I think so, that phrase can be bandied about a little bit but, for me, that was right up there.

“There were some top teams in this division the last time we got promoted and we had some good games with them, but that was right, right up there.

“Two really good teams, excellent players, both going at it. Tactically really good, really interesting game and I thought it was an excellent game.”

McKenna says midfielder Jack Taylor missed out with a knock picked up in the 0-0 draw at West Brom on Saturday.

“He had some swelling on his knee, so he wasn’t available tonight,” he explained. “We’ll assess it over the next 24 hours and see where he’s at for the weekend.”


Quizzed on whether he’ll be able to remain calm ahead of such a high-profile game on Saturday, McKenna smiled: “I’m OK, you try and stay normal. Of course, the adrenaline is a bit higher at this stage of the year and it’ll be no different going into Saturday.

“But you just focus on the work and we’ve had so many games, and complex and difficult games as well, so from West Brom, the draw that we had on Saturday, it was a lot of work to get a game plan and a performance like today’s prepared. We’ll get home now at 3am and from tomorrow we’ll throw ourselves into the next one.

“We’re all doing fine. Of course, everyone’s going to have a bit more nerves going into Saturday, but you’ve got to channel that, really be together and really push to give one more last big effort.”

Photo: TWTD