Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna knows tomorrow's Premier League clash with Wolves at Portman Road has some extra 'needle'.
The Blues won 2-1 in the reverse fixture last December, with Jack Taylor's dramatic late winner followed by fiery post-match scenes involving Rayan Ait-Nouri, Matheus Cunha, Wes Burns and Liam Delap.
Ait-Nouri was sent off after the final whistle, Delap was booked, while Cunha ended up being handed a suspension for snatching the glasses off one of Ipswich's security guards.
Asked if tomorrow's clash between two teams battling to avoid Premier League relegation therefore had an extra bit of spice, McKenna replied: "I don't feel loads of that among the players. It was a really competitive game, there was needle. If you ask our security team, maybe there's more there!
"We are going to go out and fight for our club tomorrow, there's no doubt about that. The Wolves players will do the same because both teams are fighting for their goals.
"We know it's an important game and we're going to give it everything."
Asked if he would encourage the home fans to play on the pantomime villain status of the opposition, the Blues boss replied: "Any way they can help us, and they want to help us, we'll take it!
"The player who's suspended (Cunha), I'm not sure he'll hear them from where he is tomorrow. But, yeah, we want them to make Portman Road a really difficult place for the opposition. If the crowd can do that tomorrow in any way then we'll welcome it."
McKenna added: "We've been really well backed all season and we need to make sure that we're all there 100 per cent tomorrow.
"We've started well much more often than not at home. The challenge is we haven't had the first goal at home since Chelsea, despite having had really good starts in the likes of the Tottenham game, Southampton game, even the Man City game, where we have the better or at least the equal of the chances up until the first goal.
"The support has been a big, big part of those fast starts. If there's a challenge for us in the remaining games, it's probably how we deal with the setbacks in the home games.
"Against Nottingham Forest we didn't manage to find the response to the first goal going in and then the game's got away from us really quickly. That's probably happened in a few of the home games.
"The energy, the support, the atmosphere we create at Portman Road has been fantastic all season. We haven't turned enough of that into wins and we want to do that tomorrow. I know that the supporters will be there pushing us.
"It's very unlikely to be smooth sailing tomorrow. There's going to be ups and downs in the game. What we have been fantastic at over the last couple of seasons is dealing with setbacks. We had so many last season where we went behind and we managed to find the response and we managed to stay in games and come back in games.
"If we're going to be successful, that's an ingredient that we're really going to need to find again - that resilience, that sticking together, that responding to a difficult phase in the game."
BREAKING: Matheus Cunha has been charged with misconduct following the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Ipswich Town 🚨 pic.twitter.com/k56pO3ZQId
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) December 17, 2024
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