Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna said he was proud of his players after they beat promotion rivals Peterborough United 2-1 at Portman Road this lunchtime.

Conor Chaplin's expert header was quickly cancelled out by Frankie Kent's goal at a poorly defended corner in the first half.

Town responded well to that set-back though and, though not at their fluent best, were able to secure victory thanks to a thumping Chaplin finish.

"You get what you deserve eventually and I thought we got what we deserve today," said McKenna, whose side have, temporarily at least, moved top of the League One table.

"The effort was fantastic. I'm proud of the players, proud of the spirit.

"This was a difficult game against a difficult opponent in a tense stadium. The players stuck together and showed resilence and quality, at times, to win."

MORE: Andy Warren's player ratings following 2-1 win against Peterborough.

The Blues boss continued: "The game was edgy for the first 10/15 minutes, but we're not going to play fantastic in every game.

"We're playing against a Peterborough team who had, by my count, 10 of their outfield starters having played in a Championship side that finished last season with a 5-0 win against Blackpool.

"We're playing with a squad heavily depleted by injury, a team with two academy players at the heart of it, Luke Woolfenden at centre-half against the best forward in the league by most peoples' reckoning (Jonson Clarke-Harris) and a 19-year-old midfielder (Cameron Humphreys) who, alongside everybody else, is giving absolutely everything they can.

"I don't think we can ask for any more. The players need support.

"Of course there's tension when you've dropped points late on in your last game, but we're in a fantastic position, we play, in my opinion, very, very good football in comparison to many teams you're going to see across the divisions in England and we have a group of players giving everything for the shirt.

"I can't be prouder of them today and the effort they give. I thought they deserved the three points against a really difficult team."

On Chaplin's brace, which takes him onto 10 for the season, McKenna said: "It's two good goals, two Conor goals really.

"It was nice to be able to move his position today (playing on the left side of the inside forwards rather than right).

"That's something we've wanted to look at for a while but we haven't had so many options there.

"Sone (Aluko) coming back in gave us a chance to shift Conor's position a bit and give him some fresh angles to attack from. He did that really well for the first goal and the second goal, again, shows his instinct and qualities in the box."

The aforementioned Aluko was a surprise starter given he has only recently returned to training following a lengthy knee injury lay-off.

"I couldn't be prouder of him," enthused McKenna, after the 33-year-old lasted 78 minutes.

"I've got a lot of respect for what he's done. He's back ahead of schedule. He's trained for 10 days and not had any medical issues.

"Of course in a normal situation we wouldn't have put him in from the start, but I just knew he was going to give the players a big boost and confidence lift because they think so highly of him. And I know the crowd think highly of him as well.

"We planned to play him for 45 minutes to be honest. We had a substitution mentally prepared for half-time, but he looked strong, felt fine and he wanted to go on.

"I thought he really helped us control it in the second half. It was a case of us taking him off towards the end just to protect him. 

"Full credit to him for getting back so quick and for performing the way he did. That's typical of the attitude we're going to need for the next few months."

With Janoi Donacien limping off in the 16th minute, McKenna explained: "I could probably put that in the barcket of things I'm going to give the players great credit for.

"You lose an important player after 10 minutes for the second time, Kane (Vincent-Young) has to come into the game on a cold day and I thought he got the rhythm of the game excellently and contributed well to the win.

"It was a set-back, it meant we lost one of our substutution windows, but the players responded to it well.

"Hopefully Janoi will be back soon. I think he just rocked his ankle as he went to pass it." 

With his team scoring and conceding from corners in this match, McKenna said: "That's football isn't it? We're happy that we keep scoring from them. And of course we can do better with their goal.

"It's disappointing to concede from their first corner and there are one or two things individually that we'll go into that we could have done better.

"On the other hand it's a short corner and a great ball on the inswinger. That can happen.

"Our record attacking wise is very good and we want to keep scoring more from them than we concede. We're doing that at the moment."

He continued: "Our reaction to the equaliser was really good. That was a difficult moment. They've not had a serious shot until that point, not had a set-piece in our third, and the first one they get they score from. 

"A weaker group of players might have gone into their shells at that moment, but we responded well at the end of that half and into the second half."

Asked if this, psychologically, was an important win given points had recently been dropped at home against Lincoln, Cheltenham and Fleetwood, McKenna replied: "I think that's fair to say.

"We try to be as consistent as we can. I really enjoyed the training ground this week. We managed to box off the late equaliser that we conceded in the last game well and the players were mentally tuned into the next game and knew what we had to do.

"But of course when you've conceded a couple of late goals there's tension there at the end of a game. 

"The players are doing fantastcially well against some really, really strong teams in this division and our performances, in my opinion, have been very good. 

"We just have to keep focussing on that. 

"But of course for the energy and the momentum, more externally, it was important to get the win."