McKenna remarked, “Look, there are forty-six games!” We had only dropped our fourth league game of the season. An amazing effort, that. There won’t always be bright days, as we all know.

“There are teams around us with fantastic squads in incredible form and if we use up any of our energy focusing on them we won’t have the required energy to be competitive every week.”

The match between Town and West Bromwich Albion, who are hoping to make the playoffs, will take place at Portman Road on Saturday. McKenna stated, “Yeah, it was it a difficult half,” in response to their dismal start at Preston. Even so, it was a challenging position to be, but when you give up two goals in the first eight or nine minutes—two really unfortunate goals—well. The first goal deflects heavily from maybe thirty yards out, while the second goal is two yards offside. It’s so obvious that the linesman cannot have delivered it. George is right to step forward, even though it’s a strong move given that the striker is two yards offside. It’s impossible for the linesman to miss.

“You’re 2-0 down after eight minutes. That’s probably the worst situation that it could be because Preston can then defend their box with a lot of bodies. Of course we lacked a little bit in the final third. We lacked the profile and the presence in the final third. That was exaggerated by the scoreline which completely dictated the tone and the feel of the game. Preston were able to feel like they were doing well in the game because they had the goals.

“At half-time, honestly, my feeling was that we were still right in the game. On the balance I didn’t think certain things were too far off. We just needed to improve in the final third and we needed to not have anything else go against us.

“We certainly produced a really good performance in the second half that I think deserved to get us something from the game.”