Town boss Kieran McKenna said he really enjoyed his side’s 1-0 home victory over Stoke City, believing the second-half performance was even better than the one which secured the 3-0 win against Championship leaders Coventry City at Portman Road on Saturday.

Jaden Philogene’s brilliant goal after only one minute and 44 seconds, the one-time Potters loanee’s seventh of the season making him the Blues’ top scorer, was enough to see Town to the three points and up to fourth in the table.

“I really enjoyed the game, to be fair. I thought it was a really, really good game,” McKenna said.

“Both teams certainly contributed. We scored a brilliant team and individual goal to start the game off.

“Then I thought Stoke played really well in the first half. They came and had a real, real go and full credit to them, I think they came here and had a real swing at it and pressed high.

“That meant there was a lot of space and we almost got through a lot but we also probably rushed it too often because there was so much space.

“We went for the goal every time and gave the ball back to them a little bit quick and then they were moving the ball well and causing some problems, and we really needed to dig in, but the boys did that.

“And I thought the second half was a really good performance. We played well with the ball, we started to make some extra passes, played through the pressure, defended well and had chances to counter and probably the only thing that kept the game alive was not getting the second goal.

“I thought it was a much better performance than Saturday, to be honest, where we went and scored two goals in the second half and won 3-0. I thought today the flow of that was much greater, we just didn’t manage to finish one of our moves off.

“When you don’t do that, you have to see it out at the end and the game’s always open. We managed and did that bit well and the crowd was outstanding and really gave us the push we needed as well. A good night’s work.”

McKenna was asked how important this week’s two wins could be in the overall context of the season with the Blues now five points off Middlesbrough in second and 10 behind the Sky Blues, who remain the leaders, despite picking up one point from their last six.

“Let’s see,” the Blues manager reflected. “It’s certainly a step in the right direction. Saturday was a step, I think tonight was another step again. Of course, that’s what you want to do, you’ve just got to trying to improve and take little steps forward and we’ll see where it takes us in the end.

“It’s only two games, it’s only six points but it’s a couple of steps forward and the challenge now is to try and maintain that.”

Having won back-to-back games against sides in the upper reaches of the division without conceding - Town have now kept three clean sheets in a row in the Championship at home for the first time in nine years - does McKenna believe things are starting to come together?

“No, I don’t want to go down that route because I’m certain we can still improve and when you start to think it’s all coming together, then the next thing will come to bite you.

“It’s very much a group in progress, I can see progress, but you’ve got to keep earning that every day in training and in each game.

“Saturday’s going to be a really different challenge now, a big physical challenge first and foremost after a really intense game tonight, so we just have to get ready for that and keep trying to take little steps along the way.”

Having utilised his squad for most of the matches in the current run of seven games in 22 days, of which this evening’s match was the sixth, McKenna fielded a team unchanged from the weekend aside from Ivan Azon coming in for the suspended George Hirst.

“We played really well on Saturday and won 3-0 against the team top of the league and we had four days in between the games, two home games, that’s completely different than playing Saturday-Tuesday with one or two away games,” McKenna said when asked whether it was always the plan to stick with the same line-up for these two games.

“And the players now, some of them are in a higher level of robustness than they were a couple of months ago.

“We’re getting there but it’s not going to be the same 11 players for the rest of the season, so we need to stick behind everyone, the group needs to be ready and different people are going to step up in different times.

“But today it was pretty clear against a similar sort of team to the one we faced on Saturday, after a good performance, to go again with some of the same ideas.”

Photo: TWTD