O’Neil: Proud of the Players
Saturday, 10th Oct 2026 18:43
Town boss Gary O’Neil was proud of his players after their dramatic 2-1 home victory over Fulham, the Blues having scored twice in the closing minutes to come from behind to claim their third win of the season and their second at Portman Road.
Ryan Sessegnon gave the visitors the lead on 55, before Abdoul Ouattara netted his first goal in English football with two scheduled minutes remaining to level, then skipper Dara O’Shea won it in the first minute of injury time with his first ever goal at Portman Road.
“I think off the result, proud of the players, proud of the way we finished the game, showed exactly what they are really — together, hard-working, have quality, never going to stop, just always going to keep going,” O’Neil said.
“Looked fitter than the opposition I thought in the last 20 minutes, looked like they were starting to tire and we were able to keep pushing, the subs helped with that.
“So, based off the result, just really proud of the players, they deserve massive credit for today because that Fulham side have been in the Premier League for a while now and for us to be able to compete with them the way we did today was impressive, so very proud of the group.”
Town are up to ninth in the Premier League table with all three of their victories having come courtesy of late goals, which O’Neil admits is a good trait for a team to have.
“It is,” he reflected. “But we deserved to win today, I think, throughout the 90 minutes.
“That wasn’t a performance where we were sat hanging on and trying to nick something, I thought we were the better side. I thought being 1-0 down from a 30-yard strike, nothing really in it, was a tough blow for them.
“When you play as well as we did and you have control of the game as much as we did, you have to find a way to take points from it. It would have been a tough one to take having played in that way, to have been the better side and have lost at home would have been a tough blow.
“I’d rather have just won more comfortably and managed to find a moment in our control to take the lead, but the good thing is you get to see the players under real stress and they had to make good decisions at the end there.
“You get to 70 minutes, 1-0 down at home and the crowd starts to get anxious and they want some urgency, rightly so, but we managed to find the right mix between not just chucking balls in, trying to find the right solutions, putting good balls in the box, should probably have had a penalty, big chance for Chuba [Akpom].
“We were knocking and I thought we were the better side throughout, so delighted that we managed to take three points.
“Delighted that we were the better side as well because, like I say, that team, there’s a few games we’ve played now where I’ve looked at us and thought, ‘yeah, we look like we can compete here’.
“It didn’t feel like a game we had to hang on in, so pleased with that really because performances are what my focus is on. I’m judged on results, of course I am, and what points we put on the board, but to perform like that gives us a great chance in a game and it did and we were able to take it.”
On Ouattara, whose brilliant strike topped another excellent all-round display at right-back following his £17 million summer recruitment from O’Neil’s former club Strasbourg, the Blues boss added: “He’s good, Abdoul, it took us a little while to get him up to speed, he missed a whole of pre-season with a slight back issue in Strasbourg, so we weren’t able to get him into the team as quickly as I would have liked, probably.
“He can play right-back, left-back, six, eight and 10. I played him 10 in the semi-final of the Conference League last year against Vallecano.
“He’s a talented boy. He’s obviously incredibly athletic as well. He has big qualities. But he has a lot of work to do. We’re working hard with him on some little gaps in his game. Maybe they’re not showing up, which is great, but we’re working very hard with him on making sure that we make him better.
“We think he can be a top, top talent, but still work to do. Just not on his left foot shooting for 30 yards, he seems to have figured that out himself. But some work to do on a few other bits.”
Town have now won two of their first three home matches in the Premier League, double their victories at Portman Road in their previous top-flight campaign two years ago.
Quizzed on whether today’s victory, against a Fulham side still without a win and sitting in the relegation zone, is has greater significance, O’Neil said: “I don’t know. I guess from outside. My thinking is just, ‘what did the team look like and does that give us a chance to be successful this year?’, and based on today, it does.
“That’s my focus because there’s such fine margins in the Premier League, a league of this quality.
“We could easily have lost that 1-0. I’d have been hurt obviously, but I’d have been delighted with the players and what they were able to produce against a team that has been in the Premier League for a long time, an established Premier League outfit for us to put a group together as quickly as we did.
“The work that’s gone into it from the club side, an amazing number of events that the club have managed to check off the list this summer — new head coach, new coaching team, new training ground, new signings.
“For us to be able to get to this level of performance and cohesion this early is good. It doesn’t mean we’re definitely going to be successful because we’re six games into a 38-game season, which isn’t a very high percentage. There’s a lot to go.
“So, we take today’s win, I’m really pleased with the performance. I enjoyed it, I’ll watch it back and make sure it was as good as it felt and we’ll get ready for a test at Manchester City that we’re all looking forward to. A great week to prep into Manchester City away and see what we can do.”
Skipper O’Shea’s winning goal completed a very memorable week for the Irish international, his partner having given birth to their second child, a daughter, last weekend.
“I’ve said that downstairs to a couple of the guys,” O’Neil smiled. “He’s our captain, our leader. He works hard as well on his set-piece stuff and he’s a threat in the air.
“He’s obviously welcomed a new baby this week, him and his partner, Louise, baby Vayda, delighted for them on that.
“It’s just amazing how often that happens, when something big happens in your personal life, that you manage to back it up again at the weekend.
“So, something he’ll remember for a long time this week. Obviously, the birth of his child, but then to score that winning goal a few days later in front of that big stand full of Ipswich fans trying to suck the ball in the net is a fantastic moment for him.
“And delighted, because he gives everything to me and this group. So, well-deserved and I’ll let him have at least one day off now to enjoy it with his family.”
Regarding the second-half penalty incident when Daizen Maeda looked to have been clipped in the area by Sessegnon, O’Neil was pleased that referee Lewis Smith’s decision not to point to the spot and VAR backing him up ultimately didn’t matter.
“Maybe [it was], yes,” he said. “To be honest, I’m only going off what people have told me. I haven’t watched it, but I hear there is contact and I know Daizen very, very well, so I’d be very surprised if Daizen turned down that attacking moment to fall on the floor for no reason.
“But I guess, once the ref hasn’t given it, it then needs to be obvious for VAR to overturn it. So once the ref hasn’t given it, then the chances of it being overturned diminish.
“I’m told it should have been, but thankfully it means nothing. We take the three points, we move forward.”
Asked about his hand gestures following the equaliser and whether he was indicating he wanted his players to go for the victory or sit back for the draw, O’Neil added: “We’re always trying to win, we’ve not drawn a game yet. Wins are big. It’s just trying to work harder with the players. We want to try and win, but we want to try and win from a calm, controlled, tactical set-up that we’ve worked on all week.
“We don’t want that last 10 minutes to just become random because we’re having big success in the game by sticking to the game plan.
“So, you can easily get sucked into, ‘we’ve scored one, crowd are up, let’s go’. But we didn’t need to change. We just needed to get the lads back refocused on the game plan, focused on the task and keep pushing, keep pushing. I’m delighted for them to get the win.
“A great ball from Jack Clarke as well. Excellent bit of quality, so just trying to keep them on task, really.”
Looking back on his game plan from earlier in the match and whether the late introduction of Exequiel Palacios from the bench following his late arrival from international duty with Argentina changed his approach in the latter stages, O’Neil continued: “I coached the players to understand what the opposition are giving us and they left a bit of space for Abdoul to push on in the first half.
“They fixed that at half-time, which we had fully expected. And then to have a player of Pala’s quality on bench, obviously he’s come back from international duty and it was important that we looked after him, but to have his quality on the bench and able to bring that on is always going to be an asset.
“There were a few bits that we worked on this week around how it was going to look and thankfully for us, it did look exactly as we’d prepped. The players carried it out exceptionally well. Start of the game, end of the game, big win for us.
“Three points and now we get ready, and I’m looking forward to the week, Man City week, big bit of prep to do on how we try and stop them, how we try and still be a threat. We get to do that off the back of a win, which always feels better.”
Photo: TWTD
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