Kieran McKenna has insisted that his Ipswich Town side will have full respect for Blackpool when the two teams meet in the third round of the FA Cup tomorrow afternoon.
While hosts Ipswich are riding high in the Championship and look to have a good chance of securing an immediate return to the Premier League, visiting Blackpool have spent much of the campaign flirting with the relegation zone in League One.
However, McKenna has stressed that nobody connected with the Tractor Boys will be going into the Portman Road tie with any complacency.
Ipswich Town will take on Blackpool in the FA Cup tomorrow afternoon. Picture: Barry Goodwin
McKenna, who has confirmed that Sammie Szmodics will return to the Ipswich squad for the game, said: “We’ve always had a lot of changes in the cup competitions and honestly, I can’t apologise for that because we’ve been trying to get promoted and trying to stay in the division. For teams of that nature, it is a little bit more testing.
“So, you can only prepare, do all the right things, go into the game with the right mindset. I can’t think of many times that we haven’t done that in my time here. We’ve had some good cup results as well.
“But it’s one-off football on the day and especially now with no extra time, with no replays, 90 minutes of football where teams tend to throw the shackles off a little bit and anything can happen. And there’s absolutely no guarantee.
“You can only do what we’ve done the last couple of days, which is really respect the game, respect the opponent, analyse their strengths and be ready for their strengths, work with the team that’s going to play and go into the game with a really good attitude.
“If you do that, you give yourself a chance to go through in the cup. But again, at the same time, it’s 90 minutes of football and we’re playing against a proud club and a good side as well. We have to be ready for anything can happen in the game, but we really want to come out on the right side of it.”