Kieran McKenna admits Rollercoaster of Late Goals and Game Management (ahead of make or break relegation game against Wolves)

The Blues have dropped 15 points from winning positions already this season, with stoppage-time gut punches having been conceded against Brentford, Leicester and Bournemouth. Asked about that issue, ahead of Saturday's crunch clash at fellow bottom three side Wolves, McKenna delivered a four-and-a-half minute long response. "I've seen the stat that we've conceded a lot of points from winning positions," he said. "That's a double-edged statistic because, in some aspects, it means you've started games well. "When you're at the bottom end of the table you can find a lot of statistics. "We scored after four minutes at Man City, which not many teams do, we take the lead against Aston Villa, but they get two goals back in quick succession and we come back to get a point. "I think the reality is, from my perspective, and the group's perspective, that we've had three games of the 15 - Bournemouth, Leicester and Brentford - where we've conceded goals in the very last minutes that have cost us points. "At Brentford a 97th minute goal has turned one point into none, against Leicester a 95th minute goal has turned three points into one, and you can certainly argue that last weekend, against Bournemouth, a goal in the 87th minute has led to three points becoming zero. That's six points that we don't want to lose. "I think, from an outside perspective, the opinion of where we're at as a team would be very different with those six points. "On the other hand, we scored a late goal against Southampton that turned a loss to a draw, so we can probably take one back. Ipswich Town's players pictured in deep discussion following last weekend's late collapse against Bournemouth at Portman Road. (Image: Steve Waller) "So yeah, I think it's very important that we turn those margins, there's no doubt about it. We know we're going to be in tight games if we do very well and coming out on top in tight games is something that we're going to have to do. "We did that terrifically last season (in the Championship). Now it's a challenge to do it in the Premier League. "Why have we conceded those late goals? It's a pretty small sample size, to be honest. Against Leicester and Brentford we're playing with 10 men on both occasions. Against Leicester (Kalvin Phillips two yellows), in my opinion, that was wrong. Brentford (Harry Clarke two yellows) was, at best, questionable. So Sunday was the first time we've conceded a late goal with 11 players on the pitch. "The reality is our game management can improve. That comes down to a few things. It's a new group of players. You have to go through some of these experiences. "In my first six months here we conceded a lot of late goals and didn't score many late goals, but we lived through those experiences and developed a real shared understanding of what we had to do in each situation of the game. That makes you very, very good at managing games late on. We sort of built that. "We're doing that again now with lots of new players in the group at a much, much harder level where the opposition have fantastic individual quality on the substitutes' bench every week.  "It's a process that we're working on. Certainly the Leicester and Brentford late goals against us, although we were playing with 10 men, correctly or incorrectly, there were game management issues. We could have done better in both of those incidences. "On Sunday I actually think our game management was pretty good. If you look at the 60th minute to whenever they scored, maybe the 88th minute, we looked like the much more likely team to score. We had more shots, more touches in their box and we looked like we could go and get the second goal. Really it was an individual moment (an error from keeper Aro Muric) that wasn't in the flow of the game. "That's a long answer! There are a lot of different aspects to it. It's easy to put one statistic out there, but it's never as simple as that. "We know we've had three games this season where we've conceded late goals that have cost us - that hurts, it's three games too many - but there is a lot of context behind that. In two of the games we've had 10 men.  "Part of bringing a new team together, one of the biggest parts, is game management and getting a real shared understanding of that. Every player on the pitch, every substitute that comes on, needs to know exactly what to do according to how the game is. That is something we've done very well in the past and is something we're trying to build with a new group of players now."