The Blues could still make the play-offs this season, according to manager Paul Jewell — but only if they improve a lot on the campaign’s performances up to now. Town's 2011/12 season reaches its halfway mark with today's game at Reading with the Blues in 19th, nine points behind the Royals in sixth.
Jewell said: "With 24 games to go anything is possible. We could make the play-offs but we won’t if we show the form we’ve shown so far. We’ve got to improve an awful lot in the second half of the season to get up the table.
"We’re nine points from sixth with a game in hand,” he continued. "I don’t think there’s a bad team in this league. You can tell by the results every week that everyone goes somewhere thinking they can get a result. There’s nowhere where you think you can’t get a result.
"So far this season we’ve had everything - good, bad and a lot of ugly, and that’s just the players. I think we’ve shown at times that we’ve got the ability to play against the best but we’ve also got that inability to kill teams off and concede soft goals, and that’s why we are where we are.”
The Liverpudlian is clear what he’d like to see in the months to come and during today’s match: "We’d like to see an improvement as a group, not just individually but as a group.
"We had a collective performance against Leicester and we might have to do the same against Reading, who were in the Premier League a couple of seasons ago and got beaten in the play-off final last year.
"Then we play Forest on Monday and they’ve been in the play-offs twice in the last two seasons. Then it’s Birmingham the week after. There are no mugs in this league.”