Ipswich 1 – 1 M'boro



Ipswich moved a point clear at the top of the Championship after a thrilling 1-1 draw against Middlesbrough at Portman Road.

Town looked to capitalize on automatic promotion rivals Leicester and Leeds after suffering defeats to Plymouth and Blackburn respectively.

The visitors took the lead through Emmanuel Latte Lath's header in a breathless first half but Town hit back 10 minutes later when Massimo Luongo smashed home Leif Davies' corner.

Ipswich goalkeeper Vaclav Hladky made two brilliant saves, first from Isaiah Jones and then from Matt Clarke, to keep the scores deep in the second period.

Ipswich were on the front foot from the start but Middlesbrough were carving out chances of their own and after 20 minutes Ivorian striker Latte Lath headed home a cross from Leeds loanee Luke Ayling.

There were strong cries for handball after Boro defender Clark blocked Axel Tuanzebe's cross but referee Sam Allison waved it away and Town leveled when Luongo raced in at the far post and fired the ball home. Bar.

Town immediately took the lead when Jeremy Sarmiento was played through by Conor Chaplin and Ceni Dieng raced over from his line.

It looked like it was going to the net but it clipped the post. Ali al-Hamadi tried to retaliate by retreating but was blocked.

Boro wasted a good chance to take the lead just before half-time when he was tackled down the left by Sammy Silvera.

Latte Lath's first shot was deflected with handball shouts from the visitors, while the second went for a corner, from which former Norwich midfielder Jonny Howson headed wide.

Omari Hutchinson's stunning run saw him leave the Middlesbrough defenders in their wake and as he closed in on goal his shot was deflected over the bar by Danish defender Lukas Engel.

As both teams pushed, Hladky had to dive to his right to deny Boro substitute Sam Greenwood after Town captain Sam Morsy lost possession.

Hladky made two brilliant saves to keep the game level. First he stopped Jones from point-blank range and then stretched out to palm a header from Clarke as the game came to a nail-biter.

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Kieran McKenna of Ipswich:

“Frustration is not my feeling at the moment, maybe it will be tomorrow but at the moment it is pride around the performance.

“I thought it was a fantastic game, I thought it was an excellent performance against a good team and I'm really proud of how we went about our business.

“I thought we played brilliantly, we played with confidence, tactically it was a really good battle, we created a lot of chances to win the game and I thought it was a really good performance.

“Over the course of the last two games we could have had a couple of extra points, for sure we could have lost today, Vaz (Hladky) produced a good save at the end.

“The players have given everything and what's most pleasing to me is the performance and the points we get at the end of the season, I don't think they'll drop an ounce of effort out there.

“I really liked the way we went about our business and at the end of the day we'll pick up a point from a really good performance and we've now had a bit of a recovery and are looking forward to last week and three good games.”

Michael Carrick of Middlesbrough:

“It's a tough place to come and you can see they're a really good team, the confidence is up and they're in a really good place.

“Their record here is really good so it was always going to be a challenge to come here, which is probably a decent point of separation.

“But, for us, we came here to win and we wanted to win, so it's really mixed emotions overall.

“We know what we want (in terms of play-off hopes). It doesn't change what we do for the next game.

“We want to finish the season strong and continue to do the right things. We're on a decent run at the moment and we want to try to build on that. The goal is to try and continue to really win football games.

“Again there are a lot of good things. There are things we need to improve and get better at but there are some good things we can take from it.

“We've been doing that for a number of games now which is nice. But we still want to come to places like that and win. We tried but we didn't quite pull it off.”

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