‘If you want to compare Championship appearances it’s an interesting match-up’: Ipswich Town boss hits back at being handed big-gun status after Portsmouth boss lauds his side’s array of talent

And the Tractor Boys boss has hit back at what he sees as a narrative being created about his side to suit the agendas of League One rivals.

Danny Cowley has been among those to laud the Ipswich squad’s depth and talent, both before and after his side’s 3-2 defeat at Portman Road.

McKenna sees that as a false kindness, however, designed to put pressure on his club and take it away from their rivals.

He said: ‘The longer that you're here you get a really good feel for the culture of the club and the challenge of being at this club.

‘Part of that challenge in this league is that you will have other managers and other teams who want to talk about Ipswich. People want to big up our football club and downgrade their own players and their own football club for different reasons.

‘Part of that is to create a false entitlement that we should be winning games and we should be dominating teams like Portsmouth and we should be winning this league.

‘I think everyone within the club now needs to be clever enough, having seen that for the last few years, to know that it's a false kindness.

‘It's a kindness to trick and trap the football club into feeling like anything other than hard work is going to win us football matches and progress as a club.

‘I think we have no right to dominate the first half as much as we did today. I think Portsmouth have an outstanding team full of Championship players.

‘If you want to count the Championship appearances between the two teams you would find an interesting match-up.’

McKenna highlighted the quality Pompey possess in their ranks and how that provided him with pleasure over how he own team dominated the first 45 minutes of their meeting.

He added: ‘One of the only players they have that doesn't have Championship experience is one of the best young strikers in world football, in my opinion, in Dane Scarlett.

‘I think Danny has done a fantastic job recruiting. He has an excellent team that is deep on quality and we had no right to dominate that first half as much as we did.

‘We dominated because how the players work every day and how they apply themselves and how hungry and humble they've been in their day-to-day work. That's the only thing that's going to make us successful as a football club. It's where we've got to remain focussed.

‘As a club - players, staff, supporters - we need to understand that people want us to think differently. People will want to downplay their own club to justify certain things, to justify styles of play and approaches to games and to try and put themselves in a position to get points from us.

‘We need to be above that, we need to be very, very clever, we need to be very, very hungry and humble as a football club to do as we did today, to stick together, perform and work very, very hard. That gives a chance to perform as we did in the first half and the chance to go on and win games.’