Town boss Paul Jewell joked that he was already composing his letter of resignation when his side were 2-0 down to Barnsley at Oakwell on Saturday. However, before he’d had time to put pen to paper his side had staged a remarkable turnaround to beat the Tykes 5-3.
Jewell says he was consulting his staff on spellings with his team looking well on the way to their eighth successive defeat: "I was asking Hutch how you spell ‘yours sincerely’,” quipped the Blues manager after the game.
"But there’s no point in me worrying about my own position. I’ve had nothing but support from Marcus Evans and it’s been a tough time. There are not many owners who tell you to keep going when you’ve lost seven on the run.
"All I can do is my best, there’s no point in me worrying about it. It’s not a situation that I’ve liked, it’s been horrible for everybody connected with the club and I understand when you lose seven matches on the bounce, you’re going to be under pressure.
"In the dressing room there’s just a huge feeling of relief. It’s been a traumatic time for everyone at the club.
"At least we can watch Match of the Day and then try and stay up a bit later for the Football League Show.”
He says he told his players to have faith in their own abilities during the half-time break: "All you’ve got to do is keep going, believe in yourself. I believe in myself and the players did in the second half.
"We’re still a long way from the finished article, it’s not going to happen overnight. I think some people think it can, but it certainly can’t.
"I just told them to believe in themselves. Our throw-ins were sloppy, we turned our backs on the play, we knocked off and didn’t do the things that people take for granted. The top players do them brilliantly.
"Our concentration at times is poor. We concentrated more in the second half and obviously the goal gave us a lift. I said the next goal is vital, we got it and from then on I thought we looked dangerous.”
Jewell is in no doubt why his side find themselves at the wrong end of the table: "We’ve conceded so many goals as a team defensively, which is why we are where we are.
"I don’t think we lack scoring goals, I think we’ve scored a decent amount of goals but we’ve conceded far too many and the manner in which we concede them has been killing us.
"If we continue to do that we’re still going to struggle, but the second half performance was one from a team which looked confident, whereas in the first we looked bereft of confidence.”
He says he’s never experienced a comeback to match Saturday’s: "I don’t think so, certainly not five goals in the second half.
"I said to them at half-time that I’ve been in dressing rooms where at 2-0 down we believe we’re going to win. At Bradford and Wigan we had teams which at 2-0 down were never beaten.
"I said to them, ‘you can do it, look around you, look at the players next to you, you’ve got to do it’.”