Ipswich going from strength-to-strength after sealing promotion – Kieran McKenna

Posted Sunday, April 30, 2023 by PA

Kieran McKenna believes Ipswich are going to go from strength-to-strength after a 6-0 win over Exeter secured promotion to the Championship.

Five goals came in a pulsating 24-minute opening spell through Massimo Luongo, George Hirst, Nathan Broadhead and two from Conor Chaplin. Wes Burns added the sixth in the second half.

Ipswich have had a magnificent run towards the end of the season and the win made it 13 victories from their last 14 League One games.

McKenna said: “The scenes outside the ground (prior to kick off) were incredible. To see the passion from those fans and this club is just going from strength-to-strength and today was a good example of that.

“It was a great performance, the whole 90 minutes. From when we got the first goal we were everything I wanted us to be.

“We try to go out to perform and make the next performance our best of the season and we said it yesterday, ‘why can’t this be the best performance of the year and let’s go out and not be tense, let’s go out and enjoy it and try and play really, really well’ and we managed to do that.

“Today is about the club, the community all coming together to have a successful season and we want more of that now.

“The big goal was to get this club back to the Championship. It’s been an incredible season… at the moment we just want to enjoy today and think about the last game and what we are going to try and do.”

Exeter manager Gary Caldwell admitted he was a “little embarrassed” by the scoreline.

Caldwell said: “I think we have seen a very good football team and if you are a little bit off it you can get punished and that’s what we did today.

“I’ll take responsibility for it, I’m the manager of the football club. I pick the team and we need to be better next week and try and finish the season off.

“We have to learn this lesson, we have to be better, we have to be stronger, technically improve in every department.

“It’s a really difficult lesson. I’ve had some as a player, I’ve had some as a manager and you have to recover, you have to learn that lesson and work harder to be better.

“They (Ipswich) are a good team and we tried to press them but we did not get that right first half.

“We had some possession higher up the pitch but the goals came and we couldn’t stem the flow.”