Kasey McAteer scored his first Ipswich Town goal as the Tractor Boys came from behind to beat Birmingham City and climb to second in the Championship.

Birmingham felt they should have had at least a point, denied an equaliser when referee Adam Herczeg wrongly ruled the ball crossed the by-line before going in off Dara O'Shea.

Carlos Vicente opened the scoring for Birmingham, seconds after McAteer had missed a sitter, and Ben Johnson levelled for Ipswich.

McAteer put Ipswich ahead just before half-time as Kieran McKenna's side extended their unbeaten run to eight games, while out-of-form Birmingham have lost six of their past eight matches to see their promotion hopes disappear.

Ipswich were hanging on in the second half and face a massive East Anglian derby at Carrow Road on Saturday against in-form Norwich.

McAteer fired over before he missed a great chance when he touched the ball past Phil Neumann, one of seven Birmingham changes, and shot weakly at Blues goalkeeper James Beadle.

Birmingham made McAteer pay for that miss when they went down the other end to open the scoring after 32 minutes through Vicente's second goal for the Blues.

O'Shea could only touch Jay Stansfield's left-wing cross onto Vicente and the Spaniard finished into the far bottom corner.

Ipswich levelled on 41 minutes when Johnson shot home his first Championship goal of the season from fellow full-back Darnell Furlong's cross, despite Neumann's forlorn efforts to keep the ball out.

McAteer must have been hugely relieved to give Ipswich the lead on 45 minutes when George Hirst played him in and the former Leicester midfielder slotted home his first Town goal on his 24th appearance.

Birmingham were denied an equaliser on 70 minutes when Herczeg controversially ruled Ibrahim Osman's ball had gone out of play before it went in off O'Shea, even though television replays provided evidence to the contrary.

The Blues, transformed from Good Friday's anaemic defeat by Blackburn, pushed Ipswich hard and Town goalkeeper Christian Walton did well to save Osman's right-foot shot late on.

Ipswich boss Kieran McKenna told BBC Radio Suffolk:

"I think first half, we deserved to be ahead for sure. I thought we were outstanding and we were good value to get a couple of goals.

"The half-time whistle came at the wrong time because we looked like we were going to score on every attack.

"The second half was really difficult and you have to give Birmingham credit for that. They're in a position where they had a swing at it. They've got some good players on the bench and brought on good forwards to throw everything at us.

"We didn't impose ourselves from an attacking point of view as well as we would have liked in the second half and we couldn't quite get a foothold on it. So then we had to try and be resilient and manage the game well, and we mostly did that."

On Birmingham's controversial disallowed goal: "I don't know whether the ball was in or out. I've not seen it back. In the Championship, you're flipping a coin on those because you don't know - the referees don't have the angles, the linesmen don't have the angles. But I'm not going to give that one a second thought."

Birmingham manager Chris Davies told BBC Radio WM:

"I thought the least we deserved was a point from today's game. We scored a legitimate goal and I've never been as frustrated with a refereeing decision in my entire career in football, because of how hard we worked at a place like this to get into that position.

"For a linesman 60 yards away to guess, when actually we now see the ball isn't out of play, is very frustrating because the least we deserved was a point from this game.

"You can see from the reaction of the players that it was in play and it's one person guessing in this whole stadium.

"I asked the linesman straight after the game 'why did you do that?' and he said 'I can assure you the ball was out of play, I wouldn't have given it otherwise'. But it wasn't, we've seen that and that is as hard to take as anything because of what we gave in the game and what we deserved."