Ipswich Town 1-2 Wolves: Kieran McKenna admits Championship return now ‘more than likely’ after defeat to rivals in key Portman Road clash

Ipswich Town boss Kieran McKenna admitted that it’s now ‘more than likely’ that the Blues will be playing Championship football next season following their 2-1 home defeat to relegation rivals Wolves.

The Old Gold, who came from a goal down at half-time to secure the three points, are now 12 points plus a significantly better goal difference ahead of the Blues with only seven games left to play.

Town had looked on course to win back-to-back Premier League fixtures for the first time this season after Liam Delap gave them the lead on 16. But the visitors were well on top in the second half and bagged the points via goals from sub Pablo Sarabia on 72 and Jorgen Strand Larsen 12 minutes later.

Asked what he put the second half turnaround down to, McKenna said: “I think it was a really competitive first half, the players gave absolutely everything to the game, to the first half and to the second half.

“At 1-0 up, Wolves are a good team, so if you don’t manage to go and get a second goal then they’re going to put some pressure on.

“They put some pressure on, we probably weren’t able to maintain our energy levels that we had in the first half, which was fairly to be expected after the effort that the players put into the game on Wednesday night and some of the physical challenges that we have in the squad at the moment.

“So we weren’t quite able to maintain our energy levels. Wolves had a strong period probably from half-time to about 60 minutes but I thought we had seen that off and steadied a little bit and we had some set plays and some little opportunities, probably between 60 and 70 minutes, but we weren’t able to go and get the second goal.

“And then the goal goes their way and that changes the game. You can say it’s maybe a slightly fortuitous goal. We were all back, we were defending, we blocked the first shot and it popped up to Sarabia’s foot and he bobbles it into the corner.

“You can say it’s another goal from a Spanish international, who’s come from PSG, who has come off the bench fresh and managed to find the big moment to pull Wolves back into the game.

“At that point, it felt like they had all the energy and confidence on the pitch and we weren’t able to quite find the response and we weren’t able to do enough to get the result.”

McKenna named an unchanged team for the first time this season, despite the 2-1 win at Bournemouth having been only three days ago.

“Of course, that was a consideration,” he said. “But all things considered, as we do every week, consider everything that goes into it, the players were keen to go again.

“We came through [Wednesday] despite some fatigue but without any fresh injury issues and I think the set-up was well-suited for the challenges that Wolves were going to bring.

“So we thought it was the right thing to go with and I think we competed really well in the first half, just weren’t able to quite do enough to get the win.”

Quizzed on his quadruple substitution at 1-1 and whether it was throwing caution to the wind, the Blues manager responded: “I don’t think it was caution to the wind because nothing changed really in our shape or anything like that. Conor Townsend had a hamstring issue, so he had to come off.

“We wanted to get Jaden [Philogene], Conor [Chaplin] and Hirsty [George Hirst] as fresh attacking players on the pitch. We didn’t feel that we could do it too early because Wolves were a threat throughout the game and in the second half they were a really, really big team, so set plays were a big issue.

“I think we came to the 80th minute and today we knew a draw almost definitely wasn’t going to be a result we would have been happy with and we wanted to go with everything to get the win, but we weren’t able to turn the momentum round whenever they got it and with the first goal.”

It was put to McKenna it was difficult to match Joao Gomes, who was outstanding in the Wolves midfield.

“That’s the story of the season, that’s the strength of the league,” the Northern Irishman reflected. “You’ve got Gomes and Andre and [Matheus] Cunha when he’s fit, I think that’s there or thereabouts Brazil’s first-choice two centre-mids and number 10, maybe with [Newcastle’s Bruno] Guimaraes in competition for that as well.

“They’re a top team, they’re one place above us, but they’re a really, really strong team, who have been in the Premier League for a long time and have all the benefits that that accrues you.

“So it’s a big challenge to compete with them on any given day and we’ve done well to do that today and when we played them earlier in the season, but it’s a big challenge to try and compete with any of the teams above us in the league across 38 games.”

McKenna concedes the Blues are, barring a miracle, set for a return to the Championship next season.

“I think it’s certainly more than likely from the balance of probabilities,” he said. “Not that I don’t think that we can finish the season strongly and win quite a few of our games, but Wolves are a really strong side, as they showed today, and the chances of them losing all their games, for one, is really, really low.

“The likelihood is that we’re going to fall short of our ultimate dream at the end of the season.

“There will be plenty of time to talk about that and analyse that and reflect on the positives and the negatives throughout the course of the season, but for now I don’t see too much changing in the next seven games.

“We knew coming into this nine-game block that the balance of probabilities was really small but we committed as a group that we have to show the right values, show full commitment and try and deliver nine strong performances and get as many points as we can, and I think that will still be the objective when we go to our next training session.

“We also have Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, we have Arsenal here, after that we have Newcastle at St James’ Park, we have Everton after that, one of the last games at Goodison Park, we have some fantastic fixtures coming up for a club who haven’t been in the Premier League for 22 years.

“I know today is a big setback and it hurts but I also know that the players, supporters, everyone are going to muster up the energy to compete as well as we can in the last few games and try and finish the season as well as we can.”

Home form was a keystone of the Blues’ back-to-back promotions from League One and the Championship but this season only one of their four Premier League wins has come at Portman Road.

“I think different reasons,” McKenna said when asked why he thought that might have been the case. “I don’t think today was massively about that, to be honest, because the second half felt a little bit more like an away half.

“You can probably look at different games across the course of the season. We started our home games really, really well, Liverpool, Fulham, Aston Villa, we started really well in our home games.

“Then we had a few where we came up short in terms of being able to break teams down, the likes of maybe the Crystal Palace game or some other games in which we weren’t able to score enough goals.

“We’ve had a few where we’ve had some really energetic, high energy games but the other team have punished us more with quality, and today a really spirited, committed performance but it just hasn’t been enough to win.

“We’re talking about pretty small sample sizes, I’ve said that before. It’s pretty strange for us not to have more wins at home than away. I think across some of the games there are maybe one or two things we could do differently, but you’re talking about a small sample, tiny margins that have gone our way away from home that haven’t gone our way at home.

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“I don’t think there’s always one outstanding reason and I think if there was we would have found it already and sorted it.”