In the battle for automatic promotion, Leeds United is trailing the Tractor Boys by just one point.

Kieran McKenna thinks Southampton, Leicester City, and Leeds United represent three of the best teams in the history of the Championship, and his Ipswich Town club will face them.

With just one win from League One the previous season, Ipswich leads the table after 40 games, one point ahead of Leeds in second place. Despite being financially inferior to the three players receiving tens of millions of dollars in Premier League parachute bonuses, the Tractor Boys have defied all odds to remain in the running for a second consecutive promotion.

With players of Premier League calibre and finances significantly larger than the rest of the league, Leeds and Leicester pose the biggest threat to Southampton, who are still on the outside of the fight for automatic promotion. In a historic promotion race, the top three teams might all finish the season with 100 points, and McKenna is relishing the intense final stretch against some of the best teams in the second tier.

“We’d have to say we wouldn’t have thought we’d be where we are in terms of points accumulated at this stage,” McKenna told Sky Sports. “But we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. It’s about building and continuing the journey we’ve been on. We’ve focused on imposing ourselves on the league and bringing our identity to the Championship. I’m delighted we’ve managed to do that.

“It’s been two incredible seasons we’ve been a part of, and we have to look at the positives of being involved in it. The teams we are competing with are as strong as we’ve ever seen at the top of the Championship. It’s a mixture of that, and everyone really performing well and pushing each other.”

The fact that Ipswich is leading with six games left is a credit to McKenna’s efforts, but Leeds and Leicester are only one and two points behind, respectively, meaning that one mistake may destroy their hopes of moving up. No one at any club is getting ahead of themselves, and things are no different at Portman Road, as all three teams triumphed on Easter Monday, and Daniel Farke’s team is currently enjoying a 15-game winning streak.

“We’ve had some initial discussions [about promotion], because we can’t wait until the summer to decide what our squad will look like depending on what league we’re in,” McKenna added. “But those conversations have been pretty minimal. Ninety-nine per cent of all planning always goes into the next game.

“Of course it would be incredible for the town. But we’ve not planned how the celebration would feel. We’re deeply rooted in reality. We know the level of competition, and there’s still such a long way to go. It’s not our job to dream, it’s our job to do.”