The Blues will take a break from their Premier League relegation fight when they head to Championship club Coventry for an FA Cup fourth round tie tomorrow afternoon.

Win and Ipswich would be in the hat with a maximum of 13 top flight teams for round five and within a single victory of the quarter-finals.

Asked if he felt a run in the competition could boost his side's league form, McKenna replied: “You never know what the impact would be. We’ve all seen it in both directions.

"Sometimes it can have a positive impact and keep good feelings in the group and other times it can negatively impact the team – Coventry are probably a good example of that last season (missing out on the play-offs after reaching the semi-finals), while we, unfortunately, got knocked out earlier than we wanted to (by Maidstone) but truthfully it probably helped our season. 

“All I know is it’s a great competition. We’d really liked to go further in it and make more good memories for the supporters. When you win a couple of games in the FA Cup, now we have the privilege of coming in at the third round stage again, it can start to look like there’s a possible route to the later stages. 

“We’re not thinking about that at the moment, to be honest. We’ll got to Coventry and try to deliver a good performance."

On Frank Lampard's Coventry, who recently won four games in a row, McKenna said: “We know them well from last season. They’ve invested well, have got lots of good players and have hit a run recently to get close to the play-off positions. 

“We know they’re a strong outfit at Championship level and that it’s going to be a tough game, but it’s one to look forward to. We’re going to do our best to get through to the next round."

Meanwhile, reflecting on last weekend's 2-1 home loss to Southampton, the Blues boss said: "If you look at the game back then you’ll find a lot more positives than negatives. I thought it was by far our most dominant performance against Southampton over the four games we’ve played them in the last two years. We created much the better chances and limited the opposition to very little.  

“If you analyse the game in a logical and objective way there were lots and lots of good things about the performance. Of course we missed some chances, made some mistakes that led to goals and we end up with a really painful loss. 

“You can’t brush that off in an hour, in a day, sometimes even in a couple of days. But you can go through the pain as a group and come out with the right response. That’s what we’ve been through this week."