IPSWICH TOWN will be missing skipper David Norris and key young midfielder Luke Hyam when they play Leeds United at Portman Road on Saturday.

And manager Roy Keane, who could not hide his dismay at the number of chances his team are passing up following last night’s 1-0 Championship defeat at Reading, revealed that he should have taken Hyam off at the interval.

The youngster was booked in the opening half, and received a red card after kicking then ball away in the 52nd minute.

“Luke was a red card waiting to happen,” said Keane. “The way he plays – he’s been naive of course.

“He set himself up with his first card and I should have taken him off at the interval.”

Norris received his fifth yellow card of the campaign in the 83rd minute, and like Hyam he will now have to sit out one game.

Substitute Simon Church scored the only goal with his first touch in the 87th minute to leave Keane saying: “We would have been disappointed with four points from our last two matches, but we come away with one.

“In the two games we had maybe eight chances but only put away one.

“We have to sharpen up in front of goal.

“If our leading scorer this season – like last – ends on eight goals we will be in the bottom half of the table again.

“If you don’t score it sets you back. You need to put the ball into the back of the net.

“I’m not sure we deserved to win, but we should have done better in the second half and were slow in coming out after we cleared the ball following a corner.

“But I’ve been involved in so many games when it is nip and tuck at the end and it is normally the home team that nicks it.”

Town drew 1-1 at Scunthorpe on Saturday, and this was their first away defeat of the campaign - in their eighth match on their travels.

Keane was happy with the back four but felt the midfield should have made more of an impression picking out Jaime Peters and Troy Brown for special praise.

“Jaime is a good player and I’ve a lot of time for him while Troy also did well – as did the central defenders,” added Keane.

“Having said that Jaime played well we perhaps missed him going forward.

“We will be short of two players for Saturday against Leeds, but we will be okay when all the team need to play better.”

Brian McDermott the Reading manager also picked out Peters. The manager said: “Peters did well to keep Jimmy Kebe quiet although Jimmy was carrying a slight thigh knock.

“Even at the end we wanted to win and we managed it after a game between two good teams with us having a good shape about us.”

“We could have lost at the end, but it was us that got our reward for wanting to win.

“We’ve had three reds running but I don’t think there is any indiscipline. All the offences have been relatively minor.”

Reading overtook Ipswich with the Blues slipping down to seventh place.