Tonda Eckert would have hoped, after the FA Cup distraction against Manchester City, that his high-flying Southampton team could get back to winning ways in the Championship.
Unfortunately, despite Cyle Larin's best efforts to be the Saints' late hero when slamming home an 80th-minute strike, Jack Clarke's 87th-minute leveller would rid the South Coast side of an invaluable win.
Consequently, automatic promotion is now off the table, which is a crazy sentence to read aloud, when you consider what Eckert inherited back in December.
Eckert's journey with Southampton
Southampton has clinched a space inside the playoffs, though, which will be considered a feat in itself when you remember the damage previously caused by Will Still.
The Saints would have been hopeful that the trendy appointment of the Belgian - who had been a prior success in Ligue 1 - would instantly work. Instead, it was a colossal failure, with Still only managing to spearhead the sorry club to two Championship wins in charge, with Southampton in 21st position when he was unsurprisingly relieved of his duties.
The daring appointment of Still might have gone up in flames, but Eckert would be there to save the day, as another bold appointment from the powers that be at Southampton.
Eckert, at the time of writing, has only lost five of the 32 games he has taken charge of, with their last loss in the Championship coming all the way back in January.
This crazy run had Southampton fans believing their team could go up via the top two, when their reality once stared down the barrel of back-to-back relegations.
Not one to display much emotion, with the German even matter-of-fact after the Saints just lost 2-1 to City at Wembley, the ice-cold Southampton head coach was his usual blunt self after the score draw with Ipswich, as he now looks ahead to the drama of the playoffs with his very impressive team.
Eckert's blunt comments post Ipswich
Eckert would praise his team for their relentless display against the Tractor Boys, with their heads never dropping, even after Wes Burns scored early into the second half to hand Kieran McKenna's side a one-goal advantage.
He said: “We left everything on the pitch.
" I think we came out quite strong in the second half and were a little bit unlucky with the early goal, but it just shows the character of the players that we’re able to push and always, no matter how the flow of the game, find a way to get back into it."
The 33-year-old will want this never-say-die attitude to come to the forefront in the playoffs, too, with Eckert not wanting to dwell on the near miss of automatic promotion, either, when discussing the frantic Ipswich draw.
Eckert further elaborated: “I think that was a promotion to the quality of the Championship, with so much energy from both teams.
“Now we have clarity of what’s coming up, and we get ourselves ready for the play-offs.”
In a way, removing the hope of automatic promotion from the final day does give Eckert more time to drill into his group what he wants from them, as the lottery of the playoffs becomes more real.
Southampton fans will still travel in abundance to cheer on their team at Preston North End, though, so they can round off what has been an excellent regular season, which will hopefully only get better, with an instant return to the Premier League.
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