Former Leicester City star Matt Piper has admitted that Ipswich Town’s mentality and belief came to the fore in their 1-1 draw at Portman Road on Boxing Day.
Ipswich scored a late equaliser to wrestle away a point against Leicester at home on Tuesday in a key Championship clash.
Kieran McKenna’s team came into the game on the back of a 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Leeds United at Elland Road last weekend and all eyes were on how they would react.
They managed to avoid a second straight defeat and earned a valuable point to consolidate their automatic promotion hopes this season.
Piper insisted that even when Leicester were leading and the game seemed to be slipping away from Ipswich, the Portman Road faithful and the players never lost belief in themselves.
He stressed that Ipswich’s belief came from the winning mentality McKenna has forged over the last two years and admitted that Leicester needed a second goal to kill the game.
Piper said on the BBC’s When You’re Smiling Podcast: “You could feel the belief in the crowd, even when they were sort of mutters and the umming and aahing when they were sort of giving the ball away.
“You still felt that they held belief in this team and you could sense that radiate around the stadium.
“I was watching players – Morsy whose deflected shot at the end got them the point – he was running around and you could tell he was just thinking that if we can get one, we can get two and win this game.
“And they were 1-0 down against the best Championship side there has been at this point ever and to hold that kind of belief you know it comes from two years of just winning week-in-week-out.
“They got promoted out of League One and they have started the season terrific and that’s why I thought we need the second goal.
“Out of all the games we have had this season, I never thought we needed a second goal so much as we needed it tonight just to kill any sort of comeback.”
Ipswich have a five-point lead over Southampton, who are sitting just outside the automatic promotion spots.
