Kieran McKenna hails hard work and efficiency as Ipswich ease past Swansea

Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna admitted it was “hard work” but he praised his team’s efficiency following their convincing 3-0 Championship win at home to Swansea.

While visiting head coach Vitor Matos believed his Swansea side were defeated by the better team who “deserved the win”.

The victory maintained Ipswich’s challenge for automatic promotion to the Premier League and their return to the Suffolk stadium – after four straight games on the road – came after Anis Mehmeti gave them the lead with just three minutes on the clock.

Ivan Azon added the second in the 41st minute with an acute effort and substitute George Hirst added the third after 74 minutes.

The result moved the Tractor Boys to within three points of second-placed Middlesborough – who visit Birmingham on Monday – with a game in hand.

McKenna said: “It was certainly hard work, no doubt about that.

“But when you go about it the way that we did, you can never say ‘comfortable’, but you make it as efficient as it could have been because Swansea are a really different opponent than what we have faced most of the time this year.

“They are a really good footballing side, loads of technical players who really, really want to get the ball in play and get the ball on the floor.

“We worked really well in the last couple of days. We had to be aggressive with our pressure, push on with our bodies, pretty much go man-to-man.

“We showed some really good passages of football to play all the way through their press and we broke it really well to go through the pitch.

“In the second half we had to defend, block the middle of the pitch and limited them well and had the better chances in the second half really to extend the lead and did with the one goal.

“I liked the way we went about it and really recognised what the opponent was and what we needed to do and that’s so important in this league.”

Matos was complementary to Ipswich, saying that they were by far the better team and added: “After they scored we needed to chase the result and started with good intensity but we could not match that and we tried to find a way.

“Half-time we came out better, more organised, better timings, better with the ball but didn’t find a way.

“After that 2-0 and that’s the story of the game.

“Ipswich is a really good team, brilliant squad, really well organised and we knew that to compete you need to be 100 per cent.

“Small things and small details make the difference on these type of games, scoring the goal really early changed the game and we needed to chase back.

“Ipswich was really good, (the) second goal came from a throw-in so that’s the story. It was a hard game for us, but we need to find a way to be far more competitive.

“It’s about consistency and about keep improving.

“We try to improve, we will keep trying to improve, we need to improve, it takes time. The most important thing is to build the foundation, build the right mentality, build the right values.

“Small things make the difference – Ipswich was better and they deserved the win.”