IPSWICH Town manager Paul Jewell admits he took a strange satisfaction from seeing his ‘hopeless’ side somehow grind out a 1-0 home win over Portsmouth last night.

The Blues were well-below par but managed to grab a scrappy 69th minute winner through Keith Andrews and move into the top six.

“I should be wearing a mask really!” joked Jewell.

“We were basically hopeless weren’t we? At half-time I said look, if you want to be successful in football you have to get something out the game when you’re not playing well.

“Portsmouth were the better team in all areas, let’s have it right. We kept working though, showed a little bit of desire and it got us through.

“If you want to be a decent team, you’ve got to win games when you don’t play well. We played really well at Middlesbrough and drew, played really well at Cardiff and drew and tonight we were second best and won the game 1-0.”

Town – who have now taken 14 points from an unbeaten six game run – host Crystal Palace on Saturday.

Jewell continued: “Sometimes as a manager these type of wins are more satisfying.

“If we play like that on Saturday we’ll get beat – I know that. It gives us confidence though that we can dig in and win ugly.”

Centre-back Ibrahima Sonko limped off with a hamstring injury, while tired-looking forwards Jason Scotland and Michael Chopra were both substituted.

“We’ve got a few players carrying one or two knocks that I haven’t shouted about,” admitted Jewell, who named the same starting line-up for the sixth game in a row.

“Jason (Scotland) hasn’t trained much and he’s not the only one. We did look a little bit jaded, but let’s give credit to Portsmouth too.”

– See tomorrow’s EADT and Evening Star for full match reports and further reaction.