WES Burns felt Saints were "easy to read" in Ipswich Town's 1-0 victory at St Mary's on Tuesday evening.

Despite being on the end losing end of the possession battle, the Welsh international didn’t feel as though Ipswich suffered for not having the ball.

Instead, Burns felt that Southampton's gameplan was too predictable which made it easier for his side to prevent them from creating chances to equalise.

“There’s a misconception where, when a team has a lot of possession, it feels like we’re under the cosh," the winger noted when speaking to the Echo's sister publication, the East Anglian Daily Times. 

"It’s very different when you’re out there. We have such a strong, disciplined shape, so we knew exactly what they were going to do before they were doing it.

“It was easy to read where their passes were going, and you saw a lot of the time that they were kicking balls away, off the field or straight to us, because we’re shutting angles that we know they want to play.”

Ipswich inflicted Saints’ third straight defeat, while they are flying high having achieved promotion to the Championship last season.

The 28 year old Burns felt it was important that the away side stuck to their philosophy in order to achieve their sixth win in seven league games.

“For us to come away from home, back-to-back on Saturday and now tonight, and grind out 1-0 wins, it’s a sign of a good team.

“We came here tonight and stuck to our principles and stuck to our disciplined shape. We knew that we could hurt them if we shut up shop, and that was the end result.

“Their manager has been at MK Dons, Swansea and now Southampton, so we knew that the structures and the ways that they play would be very similar.

He continued: “They’re a very possession-based team, you’ve got full-backs rolling into midfield. We knew that blocking the middle and not letting any passes through would be key tonight.

“We tried to make sure that everything went down the sides and we could defend from there. I think we did that for the whole game.

“When you keep clean sheets and you’ve got the quality that we have up front, you’ll always have a chance of winning.”