QPR 1-4 Ipswich Town: Kieran McKenna's verdict

George Hirst scored two towering headers, and Marcelino Nunez bagged a brace of direct free-kicks, as the Blues notched their first away win of the campaign to move up to ninth in the Championship table.

"It's a good win," said McKenna. "The goals were a real highlight. That's obviously the case in football, but today even more so.

"Two terrific team goals, really well worked, from things that we're working on and continue to work on - so there's loads to build on from them.

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"And two brilliant individual goals. Of course, no goal in football is 100% individual because you have to win the free kicks in those areas, but when Marcelino steps up and does that twice in pretty quick succession, it's of course has a massive impact on the result.

"So four brilliant goals for the supporters to enjoy away from home. Some good football, especially when we got the confidence from the margin, then controlled the game really well once we got a few goals ahead.

"There are also lessons to learn, certainly the period after we scored early, where we can do better to really push on in the game.

"It's the first time we've had the first goal away from home, so each situation is new for this team at the moment. How we really push on, execute well, stay concentrated, stay really consistent with our actions is something to work on because we became a little bit erratic in that phase and then the game becomes a little bit open."

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On breaking the deadlock with barely a minute played, McKenna said: "We haven't had the first goal in an away game yet and we've had lots of chances to get one.

"It was nice to get one today, even though we didn't push on quite as well as we would have hoped to. It's still nice to get that first goal because it gives you at least a margin in the game. We got into half-time knowing that we showed some good stability at the end of the first half.

"To be fair, we didn't let the game go crazy. We didn't let it get completely away from us. We managed to re-stabilise and get to half-time knowing that we could push on in the second half, albeit I don't think anyone could say that they expected Marcelino to do that just after kick-off! Of course, that was a big moment and it gives us the confidence to really kick on in the second half.

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"I think we've generally been starting games well, to be honest. We haven't got the first goal often enough. Some of that is our execution, some of it is luck. Things are inevitably going to go your way a bit more often if you keep creating more chances than the opponent in the first half of games."

On whether today showed lessons had been learned from the 3-0 home loss to Charlton, McKenna replied: "I felt coming out of that week and into the West Brom game that it could be a really important week for us and that's something that we've reinforced again this week.

"I liked a lot of things about the West Brom game (1-0 home win) and how we came through that.

"We're a long way off perfect, we know that. We need to keep improving, we need to keep learning and growing as a group. It is still a really new group. For us, it's the first time to score the first goal away from home.

"These are all experiences. I've spoken about it enough, but there's definitely a big bit from the Charlton game, and probably from some other games, about when we get a setback, how we stay composed, reorganise, trust our structure, keep our discipline, keep our control and trust that we have the quality, the intensity and the structure to win games if we manage to stay in them.

"I think we did that pretty well today after their first goal. I can't remember them having too many other chances after that, between the goal and half-time.

"Away from home, when you concede a goal like that, it can get away from you really, really quick and we didn't let it today. You give yourself a chance to push on and try and win the second half."

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