Ipswich Town defender Cameron Burgess is keen to look at the positives from his side’s 1-1 draw against Leicester City, but admitted that the result is a painful one given the circumstances.
The Blues were 1-0 up and clearly the better team going into the latter stages of the match, when a dubious penalty call and a red card changed the momentum and allowed the Foxes to equalise at the death.
“It was harsh, but that’s football, I suppose,” Burgess said after the match. “I guess the positive side of that is that we put in a good performance, but it does feel like a loss when you end up with a draw there.
“We’ll take the positives and move on. It’s one to build on.”
The refereeing decisions will be the main talking point from the match. Manager Kieran McKenna was adamant that Abdul Fatawu’s shove on Conor Chaplin should’ve been given as a spot-kick, which would’ve changed the outcome of Kalvin Phillips’ second yellow card.
Asked whether Town were frustrated by what happened, Burgess replied: “I guess so, but that’s football. I get too caught up in playing the game to see what happens. Sometimes that’s how it goes.
“I’ll have to watch it back. I’ll get a chance to do that and see what went on.
“It’s a bit of a disappointing one when things don’t go your way.
“It’s not for me to make decisions, but you can feel that way a little bit. It’s tough, but it’s something we have to look at and go away from.
“My take is that it’s nothing to do with me, I’ve got to do my job. I’ve got too much to focus on to worry about that sort of stuff.
“I don’t see everything how it plays out, I’m focused on what I have to do. It’s something I can maybe look at when I get home.
“I’ve had a few games with the national team that have VAR. I’m well used to it and I think we’re used to it as a group now. It’s part of football.
“We just have to deal with it and look at what we can control. Every team does.”
Most fans thought that Burgess’ heroics were enough to seal a first Premier League victory, with the 29-year-old making a block on the line to deny Leicester right at the end.
“We’re putting in the work in training to practice, getting around each other and helping each other out,” he said. “I thought Aro [Muric] did really well to make him have to lift it, and that helped me get back in.”
The wait for that maiden victory continues as a result, but Burgess believes that his side have shown enough games in the first 10 games of the season to be confident.
“It’s not for the want of doing the right things, for the most part,” he argued. “I think we’ve been in a lot of games. It’s a difficult league – we knew that coming in.
“We’ve put in a good number of performances now, so there’s positives to take and we have to build on that.
“We know the job at hand, which is to put points on the board, so hopefully when we can get that first win, it’ll just be the start.”
Externally, there’s clearly some alarm. The national narrative is that Ipswich are destined for relegation, even if that’s an extreme conclusion to reach in November.
Burgess is understandably taking a more level-headed approach, but knows that things have to improve sooner rather than later.
“My view is that football, it’s tough to get results, especially at this level when we’ve just come up.
“I think it’s a case of controlling what we can control and building on what we’ve built so far.
“Urgency is probably the wrong word. We’re desperate for the first win, but not for the wrong reasons. It’s not that we’re in a desperate state, but we’re still learning the league and still in a process of developing and improving.
“I think that’s what we have to look at and keep on with that at this moment in time. It’ll stand us in good stead.”
This run of games had undoubtedly been a missed opportunity. Losing to West Ham, Everton and Brentford felt damaging, and while a draw against Leicester stops the rot, it leaves Town in the relegation zone heading into games against Tottenham, Manchester United and in-form Nottingham Forest.
Burgess sees it differently, however, explaining: “They’re all tough, every single game has different its challenges. You can only have 20 teams in the Premier League and that’s where everyone wants to get to.
“Every challenge is just as hard as each other for different reasons. Every game is exciting, every game is a challenge and every game has something you have to overcome.”
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