Ipswich Town’s manager admits to Leeds United using a prediction and hopes for the club

Kieran McKenna, the manager of Ipswich Town, has admitted to Leeds United and expressed his thoughts on what lies ahead for his promotion-chasing Tractor Boys side.

Fourth-placed Ipswich went into Wednesday night’s Championship meeting against Millwall having won only one of their previous nine league games, but McKenna’s team narrowed the gap to three points on second-placed Leeds with an emphatic 4-0 victory at The Den.

The Tractor Boys also have a game in hand, but Daniel Farke’s Whites have a considerably higher goal difference of plus 33 than Ipswich’s plus 19. Southampton, in third position, is currently just a point ahead of Ipswich after the same number of games played, with a plus 23 goal difference, four more than Ipswich.

However, Ipswich’s goal difference was greatly improved by a spectacular victory against Millwall, which McKenna thought was long needed after a string of squandered opportunities in previous games. Speaking after the game, McKenna admitted about Leeds’ quality, claiming that his side has only failed to compete since December’s 4-0 defeat at Elland Road.

However, the Ipswich manager expected that his side would produce more in the promotion race’s final stages, especially as January signings Kieffer Moore, Jeremy Sarmiento, Ail Al-Hamadi, and Lewis Travis settled in.

“I think we were long overdue a night like that, to be honest,” McKenna told the East Anglian Times. “Statistically, we’ve had more shots and fewer against in the previous nine games, as well as more xG (expected goals) and less (xG) against than in the first nine games of the season. Sometimes football works like that. I believe we were long overdue for a successful night. We earned it, not just tonight, but throughout the last few weeks.”

When asked about the result, which could breathe new life into his side’s automatic promotion push, the Ipswich manager explained: “What’s really important to me is that when we’re not winning week in and week out during a phase of the season when we’ve had a lot of injuries, we’re trying to integrate new players, we’ve had some things go against us, that everyone in the building has stayed really calm and has full faith in how we work.” We’ve just stayed focused on our performances and processes.

“We have been competitive in every game, which is difficult to do in the Championship. Maybe the Leeds game was the only one that really opened up; otherwise, we’ve been competitive in 31 games against some pretty talented teams. When things don’t go our way, I sometimes feel more proud of the culture we’ve created. I’m confident that if we continue to do the right things, wonderful things will come our way.

When asked by Sky Sports if he thought there was more to come from his team, McKenna replied, “I do. I still believe we can improve. It’s not a new group, but when you add four players to an already established group and they’re finding themselves, and you don’t have much training time because we had so many games, I believe we can go on and develop. We can improve on what we did tonight, and that will be the emphasis for the next few months.”