Ipswich Town: Kieran McKenna issues Leicester, Leeds United, Southampton pressure statement | OneFootball

Kieran McKenna has revealed that he thinks Leicester City, Leeds United, and Southampton are facing more pressure than Ipswich Town are.

The destiny of Ipswich is in their own hands, which is exactly where you want to be with three games to go in the season. If they win their final triplet of tough challenges, then the Tractor Boys will finish in one of the top two spots, and they will have completed the infamous back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League in two seasons.

Everyone at the top end of the table, bar Southampton, has had their wobbles at some point over the last few weeks - or earthquakes in some cases - but McKenna feels that his players are confident and are ready for the challenges that they will face over the next few weeks.

Kieran McKenna on the pressure of Ipswich's run-in

This stage of any season not only tests teams physically, but there is much more of a mental burden placed on the players, as everything they have worked for all season long comes down to less than 300 minutes of football.

The 37-year-old believes that the psychological effects are more prevalent now than any other time during a campaign. "I think it's fair to say that keeping your composure and being really strong and tight from a mental point of view as a group is really important," said the Ipswich manager, to EADT.

"But my honest opinion is I don't think it's been a big factor for us. You take the last block of games, we've won a couple, drawn a couple, lost one, but they've been really tough games - Blackburn away, Southampton, then having three play-off chasing teams in Norwich, Watford and Middlesbrough in the space of seven days.

"I've been happy with our performances in general, probably bar one of those games [Norwich], and I think our players are enjoying it. They're enjoying the run-in, they're enjoying the games, they're enjoying the competition."

McKenna added that he and his team aren't experiencing the tightening of the throats that others may have/are in this situation, and that the other teams around them have more pressure on them than the Tractor Boys do.

He said: "This is not trying to shy away from anything, but we don't feel like there's pressure on us to the extent of the other teams. We know what the goal is, we're working with everything we can towards it and I think we're enjoying the run-in."

Ipswich's recent run-in experience bodes well for them

This time last season, Town were deep in a tense three-way run-in; sound familiar? You could even argue that Barnsley's 86-point season made it a four-way battle, although they were 10 points behind Sheffield Wednesday in third by the end of the 22/23 campaign.

Five points separated the top three once all 46 games had been played, and Ipswich's dazzling late-season run, in which they won 13 of their final 15 matches, helped them leapfrog a Wednesday side who looked set for automatic promotion, until they started to fall away near the end; again, sound familiar?

They hit form at the perfect time and cruised in seventh gear all the way up the table to secure a second-placed finish, which took them to the league that they are now in.

With that recent experience behind them, they should be able to draw on events of the past to help them get out of the division in which they got to using these same qualities.