Town captain Luke Chambers has praised colleagues Daryl Murphy and Cole Skuse for their impact at the club in recent seasons.

Chambers poked fun at team-mate Murphy after his early-season barren spell, which ended as he got off the mark with a hat-trick in the 5-2 win at Rotherham earlier this month.

He laughed: “It’s nice to have Murph back from the summer. No, Murph’s been our main man for the past 18 months and I don’t think it was ever in doubt that he was going to score.

“We were saying for a few weeks that we were going to give a team a slapping and we gave Rotherham one.

“Everyone was absolutely delighted with that, no one more so than Murph because he scored a hat-trick.

“We were all expecting him to get just one but he did that against Wolves in the next game and he’s not just scoring goals, his all-round game has been tremendous for us.”

Chambers also echoed Mick McCarthy’s recent praise for midfielder Skuse, describing him as a Premier League player after last week’s 2-2 home draw with Wolves.

Asked what it’s like to play alongside the former Bristol City player, the skipper admitted: “He would be the first name on the team sheet for me. The fans are probably starting to see it a bit more now but for me he is a massive unsung hero.

“What he does for the team on the pitch is phenomenal. A lot of things go unnoticed, like the way he gets around the pitch and covers as much distance as anyone else. He breaks play up and he’s just the type that players want to have in the team.

“I think you are seeing the best of Jonny Douglas being able to get forward, knowing that Cole is going to be sat there cleaning things up. It also allows me and Jonas (Knudsen) to get forward more because we know he is sat there with Tommy and Bez (Christophe Berra).

“Ever since he first came to the club he has been different class and I think we’ve got one or two who are Premier League footballers. We need to start supplementing their performances and get ourselves back into the top six.”

To climb as high as the play-off zone Chambers agrees Town will have to tighten up at the back and improve their defensive record.

He added: “We’ve been too generous — that’s a good word to use. I don’t think our defensive performances as a team have been brilliant because I think we’ve always relied on our team being very defensively sound and not conceding goals.

“We’ve conceded way too many and it needs to stop. We can’t keep saying the same things — that we’re doing well attacking-wise — because we’re giving away crap goals.

“We’ve got to stop it and only the boys in the dressing room can do that. It’s down to us to work hard and concentrate for 90 minutes, not just 80.

“It’s something we have been working on. We’ve done a few sessions this week and we also had the international break. A lot of the boys didn’t go away so it was nice to have almost a full squad together and be able to work on a few bits.

“I think it probably showed in stages against Wolves — they had two chances and scored two goals — and that shows you that even if you give them a half chance it’s not acceptable.

“We’ve got to cut out the tiny mistakes that we are making and look forward. I think we’re now a team that is definitely going to score goals so if we can keep a clean sheet it will give us a great chance of winning games.

“We’ve kept a few clean sheets of late but it can’t just be every now and again — it needs to be every week.”

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