Town Out to Extend 52-Year Unbeaten Run Tuesday, 19th Apr 2016 06:00 Town go into tonight’s home game against Fulham looking to extend an unbeaten run against the Whites stretching back more than 50 years. Manager Mick McCarthy admits that the Blues’ hopes of making the play-offs are now over even if they win tonight’s match. Fulham's last victory over the Blues was their famous 10-1 win at Craven Cottage on Boxing Day 1963, while their most recent win at Portman Road came in March of the same year when they beat Sir Alf Ramsey’s Town by a single goal. Even if Town continue their run against the Cottagers, McCarthy says there’s now little chance of breaking back into the top six before the end of the season with the eighth-placed Blues eight points behind Sheffield Wednesday in sixth with a significantly worse goal difference and only three games to play after tonight's match. “Yes, [Saturday was it for the play-offs],” the Town boss conceded. “Mathematically, no. I’m an optimist but I’m not a head-in-the-clouds, head-up-my-backside idiot that keeps going, thinking ‘Let’s put a smiley front on and we can do it and keep everybody interested’. “Mathematically we can do it. If we win tonight and Sheffield Wednesday lose [at home to the MK Dons], who knows, it might all be back in the pot, but we’d have to go and win the other three, and that’s not going to be easy, is it - certainly not Middlesbrough away and Derby away. “None of them are going to be easy. We’ve not had an easy game yet. But I think it’s beyond us.” McCarthy admits recent home performances have been less than impressive - “Shite” - with the Blues without a win in their last three home matches. “You’ve known me for nearly four years, I’ve never hidden away that, if it’s been good, we’re good, if we’re not, we’re not,” he said. With the Blues now out of the play-off running and under less pressure, does he feel the players might play with a bit more freedom than in recent weeks? “I hope so, but the same could be said for Fulham as well because they’re not going anywhere else either,” he continued. “I hope it does. In terms of preparing for the game, it’s ‘Go and play well individually’. We’ve been doing it for 42 games, it’s not like we need any encouragement to play a certain way or to do anything. Go and enjoy the game and make the most of it with four games to play.” Sixteen-year-old Andre Dozzell will be making his full debut and McCarthy says that will add some interest to what’s otherwise a dead rubber. “If there’s nothing to be excited about with the first team because it’s highly unlikely that we’ll get in the play-offs, if that story’s gone, we all want something we can excited about and enthuse about. “And if it’s watching a young kid come through, we all like to watch them come through, like the class of 92 with Manchester United when they all came through. “That kind of changed everybody’s perception of kids coming through. We all want to see it. It would be lovely and it would be better still if we had Teddy Bishop, [who played the full 90 minutes and scored for the U21s yesterday], he might get a bit of time before the end of the season. “Kundai Benyu, if we can get him in and Matt Clarke’s out at Portsmouth. We shouldn’t forget that, but Clarkey wouldn’t whet the appetite like a young midfield player who scores goals would, but nevertheless it’d be nice to get him in the team.” One of the few upsides of not being in the play-offs is that the Town manager can start to look at next season at an early stage. “If you get into the play-offs it’s difficult for you to plan because you’re still going and you’re wondering which league you’re going to be in,” he said. “We do know which league we’re going to be in. But we’ve been planning for it anyway, there’s always a ‘What if?’, but it maybe does give us a head start, not that I’m happy about that.” Regarding Fulham, who are 20th, nine points from the relegation zone, McCarthy says they’re another example of a club which has found it hard to adjust to the Championship having been relegated from the Premier League at the end of 2013/14. The Town boss knows from experience that it’s not an easy transition to make: “They’re safe, but it is difficult when a team comes down, which has been proven - we’ve just seen Bolton go down to League One, Wolves went down to League One when I left. “It’s happened before, Leeds have done it, Sheffield Wednesday have been there and they’re now pushing for promotion to the Premier League. “It is tough. You come down, people get made redundant. When I was at Sunderland 75 were made redundant, I had players I couldn’t play because of clauses in their contracts that other clubs would get money and weren’t going to pay that on Championship money. We had to get shot of them because of their wages. “It really is a big job in turning that around. You have players who’ve come down who have been hopeless all season and then want to leave because they think they’re better than that and don’t want to be there. But for them they wouldn’t have been there, of course. “It really is a challenge that, and that’s been proven with other clubs. And then you see Norwich went straight up, Burnley look like going straight back up, Hull may well go straight back up, but for some of the others it goes the other way completely. Let me tell you it’s a slippery old slope once you start losing all those games.” While McCarthy has confirmed that Dozzell will start, he will probably look to field an otherwise experienced side around the 16-year-old. Bartosz Bialkowski is likely to continue in goal with the more regular back four of skipper Luke Chambers at right-back and Jonas Knudsen at left-back and Tommy Smith - who will be making his 250th Town appearance - and Christophe Berra the centre-halves. The Town boss will probably play Cole Skuse, who is expected to be back from his neck injury, in a deeper lying midfield two alongside either Jonathan Douglas or Luke Hyam, who is available again after his one-match ban, with Dozzell ahead of them. Up front, Freddie Sears and Liam Feeney will probably play either side of David McGoldrick or, if McCarthy feels the Republic of Ireland international isn’t yet up to two starts in four days, Brett Pitman. Ben Pringle is ineligible against his parent club, while Daryl Murphy remains sidelined with his calf problem and Luke Varney is out with a hamstring injury. Adam McDonnell, Josh Emmanuel and Myles Kenlock weren’t involved in yesterday’s U21s game and so seem likely to be on the bench, as they were at Hillsborough. Fulham manager SlaviÅ¡a Jokanović warns that his side still aren’t completely out of the relegation battle and was very disappointed with the 5-0 thrashing at Brighton last time out. “I’ve lost football games in my career but to lose in the way in which we lost on Friday night is simply unacceptable,” he told the Cottagers’ official website. “It’s important in the next games and next season to show the character to bounce back from a result like against Brighton. “We need to improve ourselves over the final four games of the season. We need to finish this season in style and carry it through to next season.” He added: “You know that any team under Mick McCarthy is going to be big and physical. They’ll be direct and have a very strong team and we have to be ready for a side that will push us. “If we’re not ready for a physical battle then we’ll be under pressure. They’re not a team that pretends to surprise you. It’s very clear how they’ll approach the game so we need to be ready. “The war isn’t over and we’re not safe. We’re still in trouble and we need to believe in ourselves. “We can’t be looking around seeing what’s going to happen. We need to win our games and if we can win on Tuesday we can press on to the weekend against Nottingham Forest. But for now, Tuesday is the battle and we need to be ready.” Jokanović will have midfielder Rohan Ince back having missed the Brighton game as he was ineligible against his parent club, while another midfield player Tom Cairney is a big doubt with a dead leg. Defender Michael Madl (calf) and midfielder Sakari Mattila (back) remain sidelined. In December at Craven Cottage, Freddie Sears and Brett Pitman were on target as Town beat Fulham 2-1 to win a fourth away league game on the trot for first time in more than 11 years. Sears netted after just 16 seconds as the Blues made an explosive start, before Cottagers’ skipper Ross McCormack equalised with a freekick in the 14th minute, but Pitman secured the points when he turned in Sears’s cross on 57. The teams last met at Portman Road on the opening day of last season when David McGoldrick came off the bench to score the decisive goal as Town won 2-1. McGoldrick added to Daryl Murphy’s first-half goal in the 61st minute with Tim Hoogland pulling one back late on for the visitors. Historically, the Blues have been victorious on nine occasions (six in the league), Fulham on eight (seven) and with seven (five) games ending in draws. In addition to the Cottagers’ 12 games in all competitions (eight in the league) without a win against the Blues stretching back to 1963, Town have won on the last four occasions the teams have met. Fulham defender Stearman spent the second half of 2012/13 on loan with the Blues from Wolves, making 15 appearances. He left Molineux for Craven Cottage last summer for a fee of £2 million. Ex-Town loanee Ryan Tunnicliffe joined the Cottagers in January 2014 from Manchester United after ending his spell at Portman Road early, while former Blue Brian Talbot is the chief scout at Craven Cottage, where he briefly played late on in his career. Midfielder Ben Pringle is on loan with the Blues for the remainder of season from Fulham, who signed him on a free transfer after he turned down a contract at Rotherham last summer. The 26-year-old, who is ineligible this evening, made 15 starts and three sub appearances for the Cottagers before joining the Blues in February. Tonight’s referee is Paul Tierney from Lancashire, who has shown 107 yellow cards and three red in 38 games so far this season. Tierney’s most recent Town match was the 1-1 draw at Nottingham Forest in October, when he booked Christophe Berra, Tommy Smith, Cole Skuse and Jonny Parr and no home players. Prior to that, he was in charge of the 2-0 derby defeat to Norwich in March 2015 in which he booked Skuse, Tyrone Mings and two Canaries. He also took charge of the 3-1 home defeat to Barnsley in November 2010 and the after-extra-time 1-0 Carling Cup win at Crewe three months earlier. Squad from: Bialkowski, Gerken, Chambers (c), Knudsen, Foley, Emmanuel, Kenlock, Berra, Smith, Digby, Dozzell, Skuse, Hyam, Douglas, McDonnell, Bru, Feeney, Maitland-Niles, Touré, Sears, Pitman, McGoldrick.
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