Cardiff City manager Malky Mackay says the Blues are by no means out of the running for this season’s play-offs. The former Canary lost a game against Town for the first time as either a player or a manager on Saturday as his Bluebirds side left Suffolk on the end of the 3-0 defeat.

Mackay says there’s plenty of football still to be played and that Town have time to make up the 11 points between their current position of 16th and the top six: “I think with 15 games to go anyone that is of good value can make the play-offs, and Ipswich are absolutely like that.

“People go on a good run. You see in this division teams go on five or six-game runs and all of a sudden they go from 18th to 10th to into the top area.

“It’s a tight league and it will go right down to the wire, the relegation places, the play-off places and the top two this year.”

He added: “They’ve beaten the league leaders 5-1 and I look at them and there’s stacks of experience in their squad, so I don’t see why not.”

Mackay said it was little surprise that Michael Chopra, who joined the Blues from Cardiff for £1 million in the summer, netted against his old club: “Well, he is the opposition centre-forward and we did get caught on the break, so it was going to be in the centre near the end.

“Michael Chopra’s a goalscorer, which is why Ipswich bought him for the amount of money they did. He’s a good player, simple as that.”

While disappointed to taste defeat against Town for the first time, Mackay admits he likes visiting Suffolk: “I enjoy coming to Portman Road, the club have always been fairly kind to me all through my career, considering I’m an ex-Norwich player!

“They’re good people here, it’s always a lovely pitch and it’s always a good game because the crowd are always very vociferous and there’s always lots of them.

“I knew that we were coming into a tough game today and we had to be at our best and in the first half we were certainly giving good value.”

Story syndicated from TWTD.co.uk

Photo: Action Images

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