Ipswich Town boss Kieran McKenna was disappointed that his side scored only once in their 1-1 home draw with Millwall – with the Blues having dominated the first half against another of the promotion challengers.
Jack Clarke’s 41st-minute goal was all third-placed Town had to show for a commanding first-half display with the Lions, who remain fourth behind the Blues on goal difference but having played a game more, equalising five minutes into the second period through Josh Coburn.
Millwall might even have won it with Mihailo Ivanovic slamming a late effort against the Town crossbar.
Ipswich players in a pre-match huddle before the 1-1 draw with Millwall. Picture: Barry Goodwin
“There are a couple of different ways to look at it because they had a chance at the end, so we could lose the game,” McKenna reflected. “But in reality, I thought we should win the game and we’re disappointed that we didn’t win the game.
“I thought the first half performance was excellent, so really, really pleased with that. Every aspect of it, apart from probably the last execution to be two or three-up at half-time because our level of dominance and general performance was good enough for that.
“A little bit disappointed we didn’t open up more of a margin, disappointed we didn’t go and kill the game off in the second half because they came out, put two up front, went man-to-man, locked on and we had so much space to break through.
“And when they do that, we know they’re a big threat, they’re always going to be capable of scoring a goal, they’re always going to be a threat putting balls into the box and on set plays.
“But we’re disappointed with ourselves that we didn’t go and execute better on our transition moments and in the moments that we broke the pressure to go and get the second and third goal and really put the game to bed.
“If you don’t do that, they executed really well on the goal and they put some pressure on at the end and the game can go another way.
“There were loads of different parts to the game. As always, we’ll take the positives and the first-half performance how we went about it is a big positive going into the last eight games, and we’ll look at the things we could have done better and we’ll try and use this break now to be ready for the run-in.”