Boss Paul Jewell admits that the longer the run of defeats continues, the more the pressure on him and his players grows. Last week’s home loss to Watford took that run to seven games with the Blues hoping that they can halt their slide when they take on Barnsley in a live Sky game at Oakwell on Saturday (Sky Sports Two/HD2 5pm).
Jewell, who continues to enjoy the backing of owner Marcus Evans and chief executive Simon Clegg, is under no illusions: "The longer you go without winning, the more pressure it puts on the players, manager and everybody to try and get a win.
"But, if you can’t deal with pressure, don’t be a football manager, or a footballer because footballers have to deal with pressure as well.”
While he admits the performance during the recent 4-0 defeat at Turf Moor was well below par, he felt his side were unfortunate during Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Watford: "Against Burnley we were abject, against Watford we were really unlucky. Things didn’t fall for us and the players worked ever so hard.
"I don’t like to blame luck because we’re not in the position we’re in because we’ve been unlucky in all the games, but I felt on Saturday we were desperately unlucky.
"The goals we conceded were bad goals, but at the moment any deflection in the box is falling to one of their players and vice versa at the other end. It’s only us who can get ourselves out of it. We can’t hide, that’s for sure.”
Jewell knows a win has to come soon but feels once one comes, Town, currently 21st, can start climbing the table: "It can turn around very quickly in this league but I understand we can’t keep on losing matches. If you can get one result it can very quickly turn into three or four and everything looks different.”
The 47-year-old concedes that while he has always looked at his Town tenure as a long-term thing, he may have tried to make too many changes at once: "We're trying to build for the future, not just this season. I think one of the mistakes I made was try to cram everything into one year. Longevity is the answer.
"You need to get players who will be here in three to four years and get them settled. Maybe that's one area I haven't got it quite right."