Blues boss Kieran McKenna felt his side did enough to score at least one goal during their frustrating 0-0 draw at home to Wrexham in the first ever league game between the sides with the Red Dragons making their inaugural visit to Portman Road.

Town dominated against a Welsh side which sat back and made it difficult for the Blues while showing little attacking intent all afternoon.

But despite hitting 19 shots, eight on target, the Blues created few clear-cut chances with visitors’ keeper Arthur Okonkwo only once - when a loose ball dropped to Chuba Akpom in the area in the second half - forced into anything more than a routine stop.

The draw is the Blues’ second on the trot at home, Watford having left Portman Road having claimed a point following a 1-1 stalemate earlier this month.

“It’s a game, of course, we felt like we should have won,” McKenna said. “There were some positives to the performance and we’ve given away very, very little against a team who have been dangerous all season.

“But ultimately we haven’t got the goal to turn it into the victory that we wanted. We’re frustrated by that.”

McKenna was asked whether his side carved out enough really significant opportunities.

“If we score one of the chances that we have later in the second half, then we have created enough and the margin to scoring one of those isn’t very big,” he added.

“Of course, you always want to create more. You have to give Wrexham credit as well. When we were in the final third, they were very, very deep and they defended with big centre-halves inside the frame of the goal, with their midfield line really, really deep, so it was really hard to get chances close to the goal.

“But we need to keep working to improve on that phase. It’s the most difficult part of football, to be fair, that doesn’t matter whether it’s for us or the best teams in the world. When teams are defending with lots and lots of bodies deep, really close to the edge of their goal, it’s not easy to create big chances.

“We need to keep working on our final-third play but also on our set plays. You win that game on a set play. We had enough counter-attacking opportunities to score a goal off a counter-attack.

“We had some counter-pressure moments when we could have have done a little bit better to get the goal.

“Of course, one part of the game is coming out frustrated that when they were really, really deep, we didn’t manage to create as many big chances as you would like, but I still feel on the balance of it we’ve had enough there and enough ball in really dangerous positions, enough shots and a couple of big chances to think that we should be scoring at least one goal in the game.”

The second big chance the Blues had came a minute from time when Kasey McAteer shot across the face and wide after a free-kick had dropped for him beyond the far post.

McAteer, who joined the Blues for an initial £12 million in the summer, and Akpom, who signed on loan from Ajax, have made slow starts to their Town careers with both still looking for their first goals for the club.

“I think it’s not just those two, it’s a group with a lot of new players settling in,” McKenna said when asked about the pair. “Not just the boys that arrived this summer, even Jaden Philogene’s still new to the club, boys who arrived last year still feel pretty new in terms of settling into the team.

“To be honest, that’s not an Ipswich thing, you see it in the biggest and best clubs in the world when you have new players in the team, especially when you have new attackers. Sometimes it clicks and everything goes fantastically straight away and sometimes it doesn’t.

“We have to keep helping those boys, we have to give them the right direction, the right support, try and help them to utilise their talents within this group, within this environment and give them enough support and enough push to get the best out of them.

“I don’t think either of them were too far away today. Chuba got in lots of good positions, looked a threat throughout the game, and Kasey, in a small amount of time on the pitch, was right in there in some areas.

“He was right in there to get the big chance, he’s in the box, he’s flicked it on for George Hirst’s chance. He won what should have been a free-kick on the edge of the box.

“All you can do is do the work at the training ground and then go out there on the pitch and put yourself in the positions.

“We’ve got a few players still waiting for their first goal, certainly in the last few home games we haven’t been as clinical as we would have liked, but it’s not about one or two individuals, it’s about the whole group and we’ve all got to keep pushing together, stick together and keep working to turn the margins.

“I don’t think individually or as a collective we’re too far away, to be honest. We didn’t give away anything in the game, that’s a good step.

“I don’t think we’ll have too many 0-0s at home this season, so if you give almost nothing away, give yourself 95 minutes to win the game, including the time when subs come on, and get to the areas we got to, then the margin to turn that into consistent wins isn’t that big.

“We have to stay positive about that and take the lessons on the things we can do better and move on to Tuesday [away at Hull City], which is going to be a really different game.

“But, for sure, when we’re in this type of scenario again, make sure we can turn a few really small margins in our favour. That can get you the first goal and we know that that completely changes the course of the game.”

McKenna says it’s important that his players put today’s frustrations to one side ahead of Tuesday’s visit to the MKM Stadium.

“Of course it is,” he continued. “We said going into the fixture, whether it had been the frustration of today or the joy of a victory, it shouldn’t and doesn’t change much going into Hull.

“A tough game, a completely different type of game away from home and we’ll need to come in with fresh heads and just tackle that one as a completely separate challenge irrespective of what happened today.”

Photo: TWTD