Ipswich Town vs Southampton: Premier League match preview as Blues manager Kieran McKenna says home form will be vital in relegation fight

Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna insists their season won’t be defined by Saturday’s Premier League clash with Southampton (3pm).

The Saints arrive at Portman Road rock-bottom of the table with just one win to their name all season.

A win could move the Blues back out of the bottom three and provide a huge confidence-boost with 14 games left to play following the weekend.

But McKenna is refusing to label this a must-win game and says there’s plenty more football to be played yet.

“I’ve never labelled a game anything like that (must-win), whether we’ve been at the top of the league or the other end,” stated McKenna.

“We’re in January, there’s lots of games and lots of points to play for

“Of course we see it as an opportunity, a game we really want to win and we’re going to try to win. Southampton will also see it as an opportunity for them.

“Whatever happens - hopefully it’s a positive day and a positive result - there’s a lot of football left in the season. We’ll give it everything we’ve got to try and win the game but either way there’s a long way to go.

“Whichever way it goes on Saturday it’s still going to be really tight at the bottom. We know it’s an important game, we know our home games to the end of the season are going to be very important, we know we need to pick up points and this is the next opportunity to do so.”

The teams drew 1-1 on the south coast earlier in the season while Ipswich completed the double when both sides were in the Championship last term.

The 3-2 Easter Monday victory at Portman Road was labelled as one of the most important in the club’s history by McKenna.

“We had two really good games (last season),” recalled the Ipswich boss. “The second one at Portman Road is the most significant one maybe in the history of the football club.

“Last year at Portman Road they were the dominant team in quite a few aspects and we found a way to stay in the game and come out with a result.

“Now the perspective is very different for both clubs in a different league. We’re not expecting anything other than a tough and competitive game. I think it will be a good game, both teams will look to attack and we’ll hope for a similar outcome.

“The league’s really tough. Over the last six or seven games, Southampton have been competitive apart from the Brentford game. They’ve gone ahead in a lot of their games and conceded some late goals and not quite managed to get the results.

“We know the feeling in the level, the step up even for Southampton who had one season out of the Premier League is really difficult.

“They haven’t quite found a way to consistently pick up points, the margins to do that are really small. We know their qualities as a team and feel there are areas where we can hurt them.

“They have a different style of play under a new manager so there’s some different threats from when we played them earlier in the season so we’ve analysed that and respect that.”

Ipswich will be without injured duo Sammie Szmodics and Conor Chaplin but could hand a start to on-loan Brighton forward Julio Enciso.