Saints dominated the game but after equalising the visitors opener could not quite manage to break them down again so must replay at Portman Road.
Saints should really have beaten an Ipswich side who were well drilled and well organised but no matter how Saints huffed and puffed they couldn't blow the house down let alone the whole town.
Saints had dominated the early stages so it was against the run of play when Ipswich went ahead through Darren Ambrose on 19 minutes, but it didn't take them long to get back on terms with Morgan Schneiderlin capitalising on a defensive mix up to prod the ball home just after the half hour mark.
From then on the pattern of the game was set, Saints attacked and the visitors defended, in fairness to them they didn't come to defend, they were just pushed back as Saints continually out passed them, but to their credit they stood firm as Saints had plenty of the ball but just couldn't find an end product and that has to be down to a resolute Ipswich team.
Saints had a couple of reasonable penalty shouts but whereas over the last few years we seemed to get a lot of spot kicks, this season is the opposite, I haven't had the benefit of watching the replay on TV but in the second half from my seat Shane Long looked to be brought down for a stonewall penalty, of course we cannot blame our failure to win on poor refereeing decisions, however if given it would have changed the nature of the game and probably the result.
Perhaps the only plus point of the day was that we appear to have come through with no further injuries apart from Lloyd Isgrove who got a nasty cut on his head.
Clearly though Ronald Koeman wants to win the competition as was shown by his team who certainly had the desire to win and this was no game that petered out to a tame draw, Saints kept going to the final whistle and a replay that neither team would welcome with both having eyes on league positions.