Ipswich Town boss Kieran McKenna sees some positives in defeat at Manchester City but also some ‘big, big lessons’ to learn
Ipswich Town boss Kieran McKenna felt there were positives and some ‘big, big lessons’ to take from his side’s 4-1 defeat to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium.
Sammie Szmodics gave the Blues a surprise lead on seven minutes but the Premier League champions hit back with three goals in 191 seconds only five minutes later, the first a penalty conceded by Leif Davis for a foul on Savinho.
Erling Haaland, who had netted from the spot and grabbed the third, went on to complete his hat-trick in the second half, Kevin De Bruyne having scored the second following an error from debutant Town keeper Aro Muric on his return to his old club.
“We got off to a fantastic start, scored a great goal on the transition, probably the exact goal that we wanted to score today and we knew that we could score with their line being high and Sammie and Omari (Hutchinson) making runs behind, and he finishes it off well,” McKenna said.
“We got off to a great start and then the game was lost in a five-minute spell where there are some big lessons for us to learn, and I’m sure we’ll do that.
“The first goal is a penalty where it’s not a very dangerous situation. A one-v-one, but you know you’re going to have to face them at this level, but being disciplined to not give the penalty is really important.
“A 1-0 lead if we had have managed to hold onto it for 10-15 minutes, I think the base was there for us to have a really competitive game. I think everyone was comfortable with the plan we came in with and how we executed it in the few minutes.
“But 1-0 goes to 2-0 in the space of a matter of seconds, more so than minutes, and the feel of the game changes completely.
“And what I think’s positive and what was important from 3-1 was that we managed to get back hold of the game. We managed to show resilience, the team stayed together and we went from whatever it was, the 16th minute to the 88th minute without conceding.
“Of course, they had chances in the first half, but in the second we defended well as a team and didn’t give away too many opportunities.
“I think we had, in my eyes, a clear penalty [when Davis was fouled not long before the break] and we should have gone in at 3-2.
“I know City could have had other goals but we should have gone in 3-2, it’s a really hard one to understand how it wasn’t given, especially with the intervention on the first goal, and we could have gone at 3-2.
“There are positives to take. There are, of course, some big, big lessons that you get from facing a team at this level and that’s normal for us to go through that with where the team and where the individuals are at. But again, I think it’ll be a positive experience in the season.”
Asked whether he was seeing enough in his team from their displays in their two tough opening games to believe that they can survive, McKenna said: “I am. That’s not to say we were in any way dominant or we didn’t manage to make the game competitive enough today. But I’ve seen enough in moments.
“Last week, we made a really competitive game for 60 minutes against Liverpool and we showed the atmosphere, the intensity that we can play with at Portman Road and how difficult we can make it for teams coming there.
“Today, we didn’t have as much of the game, for sure, but we scored our first goal, we showed that we can come to the best team in the league away from home.
“And on a difficult day to play against City as well, let’s be honest. It’s their first home game, they’ve had a full training week, this is their first game here since they won the league, there’s great positivity around it, it was always going to be a difficult day to play them.
“But we showed we can come here, we can score on the transition and, of course, the spell of chances that they had and goals that they had is a period that we have to learn from. Similar to last week in some ways where Liverpool scored two goals in five minutes, so we have to improve on those moments.
“But on the other hand, we’ve shown in very small period of the game that we can play with the ball and play bravely and take the ball. It wasn’t enough today but it was maybe four or five moments in the game. We have to turn that into eight, nine, 10 and many more moments.
“I thought there were a lot of individual performances which were positive for us stepping up to the level and I think we’ll have taken a lot from the first two games.
“We’d like to be sitting here with points on the board but we know that the fixture list has meant that was going to be really difficult. We know we’re in an adaptation process, we’re coming with a group with so many who have climbed from League One in a very short space of time, we’re now trying to integrate new players into that. That’s not going to be an overnight process.
“But I think week by week, we’ll learn our lessons and I’m sure we’ll improve over the weeks and months to come.”
Regarding the second goal, when Muric was dispossessed on the edge of his own area by Savinho, McKenna said: “I think it was a game management one today a little bit. It wasn’t necessarily bravery or overplaying.
“We didn’t get caught passing it, we just got caught taking too much time on the ball in a situation where a fantastic team have just scored a goal and are going to come after you and you’re not going to have very much time.
“I didn’t think it was necessarily a playing out from the back situation, it was a game management situation we didn’t do well enough and we have to learn from.”
Last week, following the Liverpool game in which the Reds scored twice in five minutes, McKenna said Town had to learn how to deal with situations where they go a goal down and not allow the opposition to score again, and he says similar lessons need to be learnt from the spell in which City scored three times today.
But he saw positives in the way the team recovered from that situation: “To be fair, after the third goal, I think we showed we have learned a lesson, we just didn’t learn it quick enough after the first goal went in.
“There were positive signs from that. When the third goal went in, the players got together on the pitch, they pulled themselves in, they stayed together, we showed resilience in the next spell.
“Of course, when the momentum’s that strongly against you, there’s still going to be some chances, but we showed some resilience within it, nobody dropped their head, our shape never really opened up, we didn’t have huge organisational issues.
“How we managed that spell, we put ourselves in massive negative momentum and we had to fight to stay in the game in that period and claw some of that momentum back, and we did that pretty well.
“But for a decision, which for my view is pretty hard to understand, we go in 3-2 and in the second half, until the 88th minute, we’re a couple of minutes of saying, ‘OK, we’ve drawn the second half’.
“It wasn’t the game we wanted it to be, we weren’t able to be as aggressive as we wanted to be but the five-minute spell we had in the game dictated that that wasn’t going to be possible today and we had to protect ourselves a little bit more.
“But the group did that well and we were really close to coming in and saying that from 3-1 on 16 minutes, the game almost finished up in that situation and actually with the penalty, it could have been a little bit different the other way.”
Explaining the process around the penalty decision and VAR not leading to it being reversed, McKenna said: “The fourth official gave a signal that it had been turned down for VAR and they had looked at it.
“I promised myself I don’t want to speak too often about VAR coming into the league. I think possibly there’s a little bit of a difference at times where there’s a situation with the first [Manchester City] goal when the play is stopped.
“And then the situation after our penalty appeal is different because City have the ball and they keep it for a minute and it’s easier to forget about.
“But I’ve seen it live, I thought it was nailed on, I’ve seen one replay, maybe I need to see a little bit more.
“But I thought Leif (Davis) had one arm being pulled and another defender came across and swiped across his legs and from the angle I’ve seen, it’s hard to see how it’s not given.”
Town are next in action on Wednesday when they travel to Sky Bet League Two outfit AFC Wimbledon in the Carabao Cup (7.45pm) ahead of Fulham’s visit to Portman Road next Saturday (3pm).
