Pressure beginning to bear down on Ipswich Town manager following 5-3 defeat at Wrexham
The Wrexham Football Club's main stand. Photo: Russell Cook.
Disgruntled fans and the spotlight on the manager as he comes under pressure.
That just about sums up Ipswich Town at the moment following their jaw dropping 5-3 defeat at Wrexham yesterday (Saturday, February 21).
They showed a lack of spirit late on as they surrendered a 3-2 advantage after coming from behind twice.
And for the first time in Kieran McKenna’s four year tenure as manager at the club he is facing a growing amount of criticism.
It’s a tough time for the boss and he and his managerial staff need a quick reaction from the team as they face another tough away trip this time to Watford on Tuesday (February 24).
The away form this season has been mixed compared to the home games.
On the road they have now won five, drawn four and lost six in stark contrast to a record of won 10, drew five and lost just one at Portman Road.
McKenna made 10 changes to his team for last Friday’s 1-0 FA Cup loss in North Wales, then reverted back to the side that had previously started at Pride Park for yesterday’s Championship clash.
By contrast Wrexham, who fought out a 2-2 draw earlier in the week at Bristol, kept a more settled side and showed a huge amount of team spirit which was sadly lacking from Town.
Poor defensive mistakes contributed to some of the goals and McKenna needs to find a quick fix and soon as that small section of a growing number of disgruntled supporters will grow.
Speaking to BBC Radio Suffolk after the game he said: “Disappointed with the outcome and ourselves.
“There’s no two ways about it, you score three goals of the quality that we did away from home you’d expect to win the game but unfortunately we didn’t defend well enough.
“It’s great execution from Kieffer (Moore) for the first goal, probably most disappointed with the second goal because that’s when we’re all back and we don’t defend it well enough and then we get caught on some counters in the second half when we didn’t manage the game as well as we could have.
“We’re really frustrated to concede those type of goals and it means that the good things that we done today are lost.
“I thought we came out really, really well in the second half and up until their third goal we were by far the dominant team and if anything we were maybe over pushing for the fourth goal and were really pushing to go and score the fourth.
“There’s positives in how we reacted in going behind and coming back in it but when the outcome ends up like that you lose the positives in that.
“We recognise within the group that coming back and scoring those goals against a team that we didn’t score against earlier in the season, there’s positives in that, but we need to be really honest with ourselves and say that the goals we conceded are not good enough and that’s why we lost the game.”
He said it “was good” to have a run of games coming up thick and fast and added: “It’s good to have a quick run of games now and we’re ready to get into it … and we’re going to have to turn it round as quick as we can.”
Not one of players are premier ship players so a waste of time going up mick high Wycombe