Ipswich Town boss Roy Keane was not looking for excuses after his side's 4-1 hammering at Carrow Road.

Town were trailing 2-1 when they had goalscorer Damien Delaney sent off for a foul on City skipper Grant Holt eight minutes before half-time, but Keane was not about to blame referee Keith Hill for the scale of his team's defeat, which left them in 16th place in the Championship.

He said: 'It doesn't matter what I think of the sending-off. Let's not waste our time and energy talking about was there cover, did he actually pull him back? The ball should have been cleared, simple as that.

'It was the same for the first goal, so I am not going to sit here and question the officials. I think there has been enough of that over the last few weeks with other managers and obviously other countries. In any game of football, whether you are a professional or an amateur, you have got to do the basics right and we didn't do that today, whether it be for the first couple of goals or the sending-off. You make it very hard for yourselves.'

Keane described his first East Anglian derby as 'a long afternoon'.

'Once again giving teams a helping hand and poor decision making has cost us,' he said. 'It was a long second half, of course, very hard to get back into it. I took a bit of a gamble in the last 15, 20 minutes and of course we opened the door then to concede more goals. So it's disappointing, of course.

'At 2-1, even though we gifted two goals away I think we were very much in the game. It was pretty open and they were causing us problems, but I just thought we'd be OK, and then came the sending-off not long before half-time.

'We're not good enough to be giving away goals like that and to be playing with 10 men. We've not won the last few games with 11. With 10 it was not impossible – we tried to keep it tight and just try to maybe nick something.'

After four straight defeats, losing the derby so heavily puts Keane's tenure at Portman Road under further question, though Town must concentrate first on a Carling Cup quarter-final at home to West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday.

'When you lose a match it creates pressure. But that's the pressure of the job. You now that when you come into it, and that's it, you have got to deal with it,' said Keane.

'It was pretty tough last year when we didn't win for, what, 14 or 15 games. But obviously the expectation this year was it was going to be better. I analyse my position every single day, whether we have won three or four or lost one or two, whatever it might be, and that doesn't change. But we have got to try to turn things around and it is not going to get any easier.'