Kieran McKenna’s side were beaten by Wrexham on Friday evening
Kieran McKenna’s Ipswich exited the FA Cup on Friday(Image: Getty Images)
Kieran McKenna admitted he wasn’t too disappointed by Ipswich Town’s FA Cup exit, with the added scheduling conflicts if they’d gone through likely problematic for their promotion chase.
Ipswich were beaten 1-0 at Wrexham on Friday evening in the FA Cup fourth round, after McKenna made ten changes for the game. They included handing former Boro star Chuba Akpom only his third start of the year, with his most recent coming in the last round of the cup.
While McKenna was disappointed with the performance, as Josh Windass’ goal secured victory for Phil Parkinson’s side, he admitted exiting the competition wasn’t too big a blow, with the tractor Boys already playing catch up with Middlesbrough.
Mckenna told the East Anglia Daily Times: “If you make changes, go out and win your next league game (back at Wrexham next weekend) then I know there won’t be too many questions.
“If you look at the schedule and where we would fit in the games for an FA Cup run, to be honest it was really hard to see how that wouldn’t have been to the detriment of the group.
“Having said that, we’re competitive people and it’s a proud football club and there’s a fantastic support here tonight (1,100), so we tried to balance those goals. The players tried and we went to the last second with it.
“We’re really disappointed for the supporters, especially those who travelled. But with the schedule how it is, having a clear focus now on the league games could be really important.
“We’ve got minutes into some boys tonight, no injuries, and I think that will set us up better for the nine games in four weeks we have coming up.”
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Heading into this weekend, Ipswich trailed Boro by seven points, albeit with a game in hand. That game in hand is their twice-postponed clash with Portsmouth at Fratton Park.
By Monday evening, when Boro clash with second-placed Coventry City, Ipswich will lose ground in terms of points on at least one of their two promotion rivals, while still needing to squeeze two extra games in. That would have been three had they beaten Wrexham on Friday and advanced to round five.
Their trip to Portsmouth is still to be rescheduled for a third date, while they should have been hosting Hull City this weekend. That game has been rearranged for March 3 – in between matches against Swansea City (H) and Leicester City (H).
McKenna had bemoaned the scheduling issues ahead of the game too, saying: “We know the schedule that we have coming up is unparalleled really in terms of the other teams in the league.
“We have games to catch up. We’ve had two trips to Portsmouth and one to Blackburn this year that had to be repeated. We know we’ve got an awful amount of games and trips to come in the months ahead and really important goals there.”
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