Boss Roy Keane says some of his squad have done more than their fair share in helping the Blues to safety this season, while a number of others have underperformed. The Town boss has said he will look at shipping out several players in the summer when he will target “four or five” new additions to his squad.
Keane said: "I think we look back on the season and there have been several players who have done more than their fair share of carrying the load. I look at other players and say ‘we need more from you’.
"I dread to think where we’d be without Jon Walters, Grant, Damien and Gareth, despite disappointments in certain parts of games, they’ve been a big part of things. I think David Wright has done well coming in, scoring that goal against Derby, showing good experience, playing left-back and playing right-back.
"Young Connor Wickham’s done more than his share, Brian Murphy was a big boost when he came in, young Jack Colback and David Norris when he came back from his injury. I look at those players and wonder where we might be without them.
"It’s no coincidence that when certain players play in my team the chances of us winning are a lot, lot higher than when other players play in the team.”
Keane recently said that the core of a squad had emerged and these players — with the exception of Colback who is set to return to Sunderland at the end of the season - are likely to be the players he is looking to base his 2010/11 team around.
The Blues boss admits that his side haven’t always been the prettiest to watch this season: "I think there have been certain games where we have been more direct, but even the way we were set-up last week [at Forest] we were a bit open and I probably should have changed that at half-time.
"It depends on certain situations. We lost a lot of games earlier in the season where we dominated possession and we’ve won a lot of games where we’ve had less possession than the opposition. It’s about getting the balance right.”
Keane says different teams are perceived in different ways: "You say we play long ball, I think I see Chelsea do it and they call it long passing. Reading had more possession than us, but we won that game. But at the start of the season for the first 14 or 15 games we were dominating teams in almost every area.
"Possession, we had more corners than anybody and you all know we’ve had more shots than any team in the Championship. We top most of the fitness data.
"But you want to be careful which charts you’re talking about. We want to be in that top six next season and, we come back to it again, you can top everything else but unless you can put the ball in the back of the net, we’ll be having the same conversations next year.”