Ipswich Town boss Mick McCarthy believes his side produced their best performance of the season in last night’s 2-1 home win over Leeds United.

The Blues conceded after just 12 seconds, Souleymane Doukara capitalising on a series of errors, but became increasingly dominant thereafter.

Luke Chambers headed home the 50th minute leveller and, following a series of near misses, the victory was sealed in stoppage-time via substitute Brett Pitman’s header.

“It was a bonkers start and a magnificent end to a really good game,” said McCarthy, whose team have now won eight of their last 12 league matches to move up to fifth in the Championship table.

“It was one that we thoroughly deserved to win, I might add, in my view.

“Their goal came after a mistake, but he took it well. Good luck to him – I can say that now we’ve won. For the first 10/15 minutes they were probably slightly the better team, but after that we’ve been different class. Their keeper has made all sorts of saves and we’ve created enough chance to win two games.

“We were excellent. That’s as well as we’ve played. If we’d have drawn then we’d all be feeling differently of course. There wouldn’t have been the chants of ‘one Mick McCarthy’ behind the goal and all that then! It would probably have been boos. I understand that though because they expect us to win at home.”

The Town boss, whose side have now remarkably won 15 successive Tuesday night home games, added: “My half-time team talk was very calm and calculated. I thought we were excellent and said that if we kept playing that way and opening them up we would score. And I said if we score one, we’ll score two. I fancied us to win it, even though we were 1-0 down. That might sound bonkers, but we were dominating possession.”

Leeds boss Steve Evans saw the game differently. He stayed in the tunnel afterwards to give referee Frederick Grahams a piece of his mind and then displayed sour grapes in his post-match press conference, which he reluctantly conducted via clipped answers.

“We had a perfect start scoring in the first minute and we dominated for the first 10 to 15 minutes,” he said. “You know they are not going to pass the ball around, instead lumping it to (Daryl) Murphy. It became a dour battle between the two teams.

“Their two goals came from two crosses when we switched off – they were two poor goals.

“We should have tried to take the point but at the end Sully should walk the ball into the corner for their goal.

“I can’t fault the efforts of my players though the referee will be getting a low mark – I thought he was absolutely garbage.

“We got in good areas to create but we didn’t create enough.

“It demonstrated to me that we need to bring some more quality into the football club and we are trying to do that.

“Ipswich are a benchmark for us, but I don’t think they deserved the win. In spells, they were disjointed and just as bad as we were.

“No disrespect, but if that’s the benchmark then I’ll take that benchmark.”