“We haven’t managed to beat them yet” Ipswich Town boss looks past Sheffield Wednesday form

That’s the message of Tractor Boys manager Kieran McKenna ahead of this afternoon’s clash at Hillsborough between two sides that have had plenty of battles in recent times.

Ipswich pipped Wednesday to the second automatic promotion spot in last season’s League One shake-up in what was a record-breaking chase to the Championship.

The Owls of course were promoted cia the play-offs in remarkable fashion and the two sides will now do battle in the second tier for the first time since February 2019.

But it will be their fourth league meeting in a little over two years - a run that resulted in three draws and an Owls win.

“We’ve played three times in the last 18 months and we haven’t managed to beat them yet, so that leaves us really clear about the scale of the challenge,” McKenna said on the period of time since he has been in the job at Portman Road.

“We know how powerful they can be, we know the strengths of their individual players, we know the impact that the crowd can have on things there, but we also know that we can go there and play good football and take control of it because we did that for a large part last year.”

“We've had five games, we've won four, another time we could have won five, but maybe we could have won only two or three if things hadn't gone our way.”

McKenna appreciates the difficulty his Wednesday counterpart Xisco has faced in his whirlwind first few weeks at S6, and made clear that despite a tally of one point from their opening four games, points totals at this stage of the campaign can be deceiving.

“They haven't won games yet, but Middlesbrough haven't won games yet and they're one of the best teams in the league and their xG's really high.

“Sheffield Wednesday are a strong team with a new manager integrating new ideas. In their last game they went to Elland Road to face a confident Leeds, who had just beaten us, and performed really well and got a (0-0) draw."