Wigan v Ipswich: Blues boss Mick McCarthy criticised his players not being ruthless enough at both ends of the pitch following this afternoon’s 2-0 defeat at Wigan Athletic.

An unmarked Ryan Shotton squeezed an angled header inside the near post, following a corner, to give the Latics the lead in the 12th minute.

Ipswich then failed to take a host of chances in the first half, with keeper Dean Gerken’s mistake gifting Nick Powell an 89th goal to kill the game off just as the Blues were pressing for a leveller.

“You’ve got to score them haven’t you; you’ve got to be ruthless – and we weren’t today,” rued McCarthy.

“There were two good saves, some good blocks, but we should have scored.

“It’s a good header (by Shotton) but we should have marked him better, then we let them off the hook with the chances that we missed. I sound like a broken record.”

On Gerken’s mistake for the second goal, the Blues boss said: “He’s made a rick. He’s trying to keep it in and get the ball up the pitch. It’s easy (to say) afterwards, but he knows he should have headed it, we maybe could have got round and helped him better, but we didn’t, it ends up in the net and kills us off.

“There was still two or three minutes left to try and get something, but he’s made a rick and there’s nothing we can do about it now.

“Ruthless is the word – and that’s at both ends. Today we weren’t.

“We let them off the hook in the first half and the two goals we’ve given away were mistakes. We’ve got to be more clinical.”

Town have more than matched all three of the Championship’s newly-relegated sides away from home, but have been defeated in all three matches.

“We’ve got the points that we have and we are where we are because we’ve not completed the task that we should have done,” said McCarthy,

“We’ve gone to Reading, QPR and Wigan, the three teams which came down, everyone says ‘you’ve had a tough start’, well that’s rubbish because we’ve been equal – if not better – than those teams for large parts.

“On all three occasions we’ve come away losers though and that’s not good enough.”

The Blues boss did find one positive from the afternoon though, the lively performance of Paul Taylor off the bench.

He said: “I wanted to get him on the pitch because I thought he might be Johnny on the spot and to be fair he did well, I was pleased. There’s a goal in him definitely.”