Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna said his 'feet are firmly rooted in reality' following tonight's frustrating goalless home draw with QPR.

The Blues boss without five star men for this fixture - Leif Davis (calf), Sam Morsy (suspended), Wes Burns, Nathan Broadhead (both ill) and George Hirst (hamstring) - and an unusually disjointed display followed.

Asked for his assessment, McKenna puffed his cheeks out before replying: "Yeah... I didn't think it was a very good match, or general performance, or general atmopshere.

"Of course it was a really difficult build-up to the match, right up to two minutes before kick-off when Nathan Broadhead is vomiting in the dressing room. That's a few players now with the same vomiting bug and probably a couple more to come to be honest.

"So yeah, a difficult build-up. It wasn't a great game. Of course there are a lot of factors behind that. It's a third game in six days after a massive effort (against Leeds and Leicester). Players are humans.

"I thought the effort levels, especially in the second half, were excellent. We tried really, really hard. We had some chances to win the game and didn't give up any chances from open play really. It was just the one header from a set play. 

"Ultimately we didn't do quite enough to win the game though."

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On his enforced absentees, he explained: "Leif Davis has got a calf strain. We're assessing him day-by-day, we don't know how long it's going to take.

"Wes Burns is, as I said, very ill with the virus that's in the camp. Nathan Broadhead was vomiting in the warm-up with probably the same virus which has hit a couple of staff members too.

"Who else is there? George Hirst is obviously out with the hamstring injury, Samy (Morsy) was suspended, while Harry Clarke has got an ongoing Achilles issue that needs to be managed. He had a lot of pain after the other night so was limited in the number of minutes he could do tonight."

Town remain second in the Championship table, but are now just three points ahead of Southampton following a four-game winless run.

McKenna continued: "Of course we could have played better, but my feet are firmly rooted in reality. We're playing against a QPR team with much more Championship experience. They're a much more established Championship team than us. We make an awful lot of changes to the team in one go and not many of those were optional. So it was always going to be a difficult game.

"If anyone was coming here tonight thinking we were going to just turn up and batter QPR in what was a third game in six days with the quality they have in their side... Of course that's what we aim for in every game, and we've done incredible to achieve quite a lot of victories this year, but that's not the reality.

"It's humans, professional footballers doing their best, for a third game in six days. Some are coming into the team who haven't played in a long time, all at the same time, against another good team.

"We didn't perform as well as we would have liked and weren't able to produce the sort of game we would have liked for the supporters. But that's the reality of football."

With the start of the second half delayed by 20 minutes due to a medical emergency in the stands, McKenna said: "I don't think it impacted the game really. Our thoughts are obviously just fully with the family and people concerned. It was handled as well as possible, I thought, by the officials."

Town are back in action on Monday with a New Year's Day game at Stoke.