Ipswich Town boss Kieran McKenna is adamant that he and his team ‘won’t
Southampton defeated West Brom 2-0 last night, and Leeds defeated Plymouth by the same score this afternoon to pull further ahead of Town in a very competitive fight for automatic promotion.
After that, the Blues battled back to defeat Swansea 2-1 to get back to within one point of third-place Saints, whom they will face on Easter Monday, and three points of second-place Leeds, who they still have a game against.
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McKenna responded, “I know it has zero impact on me and I actually don’t think it does on the players either,” when asked about the performance of the teams his squad is attempting to catch.
“I honestly don’t get any sense of that at all, but sometimes you worry with things like that, that it will infiltrate the group and they’ll worry about other teams’ results.”
They agree with me that we’re working really hard to maintain our level of competitiveness. They are aware that our expectations were and still are not there.
They are aware of the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the season: to play as well as we possibly could, to enforce our style of play, to continue cultivating our culture, and to give every game our all.
“We reviewed those goals again in January and that’s where our focus (still) is.”
He went on: “We took the strategy of not talking too much about point totals and stating things like ‘we need to win two of our next three games’ last year in League One. Our strategy from the previous season, when we were the most successful squadThey agree with me that we’re working really hard to maintain our level of competitiveness. They are aware that our expectations were and still are not there.
They are aware of the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the season: to play as well as we possibly could, to enforce our style of play, to continue cultivating our culture, and to give every game our all.
“We reviewed those goals again in January and that’s where our focus (still) is.”
He went on: “We took the strategy of not talking too much about point totals and stating things like ‘we need to win two of our next three games’ last year in League One. Our strategy from the previous season, when we were the most successful squad
That was fortunate since last year’s promotion would have required 90 points if we had concentrated on what others say you normally need. Ultimately, Sheffield Wednesday lost out on 96 points, and we required 98 points to advance.
“Again, you would probably think that 90 points is sufficient to advance from the Championship if we had spent more effort on it this year. However, it seems very obvious that won’t be sufficient.
“Look, compared to the other teams we’re playing this year, our situation is a little bit different. Even though we never brought it up, I was more aware of Sheffield Wednesday’s or Plymouth’s performance last year. I took further looks at the table.
I genuinely believe that the three clubs we face this year—Leicester, Southampton, and Leeds—are the best in the history of the Championship; they are very talented for this caliber of play. It’s likely that Leicester will surpass the Championship’s all-time high in points.
“If any of those teams win on a Saturday, we won’t waste any emotional energy comparing ourselves to them and being unhappy. We anticipate their victory.
We all know, deep down, that we are not under any pressure to go back to where we were last season. We’re simply taking each game one at a time. We will not be thinking about those teams for any length of time.
McKenna said, “No, we’d rather have parachute payments, we’d rather have extra Financial Fair Play wriggle room, we’d rather have been able to add more to the squad in the summer and we’d rather have been able to add more in January,” when asked if he would have preferred to be the underdog in this promotion battle. That is the real truth about that.
“It is what it is, really. This is a great group of people that are humble and full of spirit. Being consistent has several advantages. We’re taking full advantage of the circumstances.
But would we want to have more talented players? If other players of a very high caliber entered the changing room to share the burden with them, would the players already there prefer it? If