Town boss Mick McCarthy says he would have been delighted to be fourth at this stage of the season had it been offered to him back at the start of the campaign in August.

“Of course," he said. “I got a really nice text message from one of my pals yesterday, one of my Ipswich friends, who said there’d be at least 12 teams who would swap places with us.

“I sent him a text back saying that actually there’ll be 20 teams that would swap places with us.

“We have a defeat and everybody’s [disappointed], what you can’t do is start changing things and worrying about things and all of a sudden think everything’s wrong, because it’s not.

“We actually played all right on Saturday and that performance would have got us a win in a lot of games. We’ve probably played worse than that and won.”

He says the weekend results have made an already keenly contested division even closer with only seven points separating leaders Derby from Brentford in seventh.

“It just makes it tighter. It’s going to be right to the very last knockings, to the run-in,” the Town boss added. “We always reckon that if you get two points a game you get 92 points and you’ll go up.

“We were looking at that and thinking that that would be the benchmark but I’m not convinced it will be because Derby have lost games, Bournemouth lost, Brentford had a bit of a bad spell, we’ve had a bit of a tough time and then Middlesbrough lost against Leeds on Saturday, nobody would have seen that.

“I think we’re all going to cut each other’s throats. There’ll be fewer points needed to win it, so I think we’re all in it for that.

“Whether that pushes the play-off points up or not, I don’t know, but 75 will get you in them, I’m certain.”

McCarthy says one of his former clubs has too much ground to make up from their current position of eighth to challenge for the title: “Wolves aren’t going to make 11 points up on Derby. I’m not picking on them because they’re my old club.

“That would be incredibly difficult to do because Derby are a good side and for them to win four more games than Derby out of 14 is just not going to happen.”

But he believes all the other sides at the top of the table are in with a shout: “I think we’ve all still got a chance. If you’re six points behind, a couple of wins and you’ll do it.

“If you look at the fixtures we’ve all got each other to play. This is a really tough month for us with the games we’ve got, we’re playing Brentford, Watford and Norwich, all teams around us, and Middlesbrough. We’ll see. We’re all still fighting for it. It’s great to be in that position.”

Photo: Action Images

Suffolk_n_Good added 06:24 - Feb 24 I accept & agree that we would of accepted 4th at the beginning of the season, but that is increasingly looking under threat, if we don't start off by winning tonight & at least getting a point on Sunday, we could be out of the top 6 come Sunday evening, then what will Mcarthy say..... "We'd of been happy with 7th at the start of the season"?!?! Of bigger concern is we're not playing well.... time will tell, COYBs

0

bluefeast added 08:06 - Feb 24 Unlikely we will finish below 7th , if we do finish 7th i will view this season as an absolute lost load of junk ,you get nothing for 7th. We were far better place at christmas ,weve dropped of the pace . If you look at the stats since christmas for the top 8 sides we are in 8th place. It reads Norwich ,Wolves ,Derby .Middlesborough,Bournmouth Watford ,Brentford ,Ipswich. I personally feel Norwich will end up top 2. Probably with Derby.

1

Paddy39 added 12:47 - Feb 24 Naaridge will finish 3rd, Ipswich 6th and it will be an east Anglian derby play off semi-final. This could go either way.
1

Blogs 295 bloggers

Ipswich Town Polls