BLACKBURN R 0
IPSWICH TOWN 1
Chaplin 9
IPSWICH will host Southampton tomorrow as the new leaders of the Championship after scrapping to a narrow win over Blackburn Rovers.
Head coach Kieran Mc-Kenna hailed the Tractor Boys’ defensive display at Ewood Park after Conor Chaplin’s ninth-minute goal was enough to see off Rovers, who had two goals chalked off.
He said: “Fantastic result, you have to enjoy every win you get in the Championship.
“The performance was mixed. I thought first half we started well. We gave the opposition problems and controlled most of the first half. Blackburn had a counter-threat and they set up to give us problems through the middle of the pitch so we didn’t have it all our way.
“We came out at the start of the second half and did well. As the second half went on, it became tough.
“We knew there’d be tiredness in the group, and it became a challenging last 30 minutes.
“We worked really hard, we defended our box really well, blocked crosses, defended set plays well, blocked shots.
“We didn’t control the game as we would have liked but sometimes you have to show that other side and I thought we did that really well.
”Town flew out of the traps and made their early dominance count through Chaplin’s well-worked goal.
He sprayed the ball out wide for Leif Davis and ran into the box to meet the defender’s low cross before letting fly with a first-time shot that found the bottom corner, but Aynsley Pears somehow let the ball squirm through him.
Rovers thought they’d equalised on the half hour when a flowing move
