Blues boss Paul Jewell says he told his players to believe in themselves and to believe in one another at half-time during the sensational 5-3 win at Barnsley earlier in the season. Town were two goals down and looking destined for their eighth straight defeat until an astonishing second half turnaround.
Jewell says there was no ranting and raving despite the desperation of the situation: "I was walking down the touchline thinking that it looks like I’m going to be having Christmas at home. It was a long walk and I thought that I’ve got to get this team-talk right.
"I was pretty calm at half-time. I told the players to believe in yourselves, we’re better than this, believe in each other and just be positive.
"Goals change games and we got a goal in the first 25 seconds or whatever and after that every time we went forward we scored a goal, it seemed.
"We scrambled a victory against Derby the week after, then we had a good result at Leicester, then we lost at home against Forest.”
He says that the subsequent upturn really began with the 2-2 home draw with Blackpool: "I think since the Blackpool game we’ve shown signs of recovery, although obviously everyone talks about the Barnsley game because it would have been eight defeats in a row if we’d lost and obviously to come back like we did was a great victory.”
After the Oakwell match he joked that he’d asked coach Chris Hutchings how to spell ‘sincerely’ but insists he wasn’t really expecting to be on his way out of Portman Road had the match ended in an eighth successive loss: "I’d had conversations with Marcus before then, so it wasn’t as if if we’d lost to Barnsley I’d got the phone call. It was more professional pride really and determination to get it right.”
He admits that that bad run got to him, as it would anyone in the same position: "I’m a human being, and any manager who says he takes no notice or you don’t feel it [is lying]. Of course you do.
"But you have to try and still believe in yourself, which is the difficult thing. I have to say one of the reasons why we’ve turned it around is because I think the players know that the owner is behind me.
"He’s been here a couple of times and spoken to the players and they’ve known that Marcus is behind me.
"I think at some football clubs the players know that the owner or the chairman is waiting to pull the trigger any time and that creates uncertainty.
"I’ve never had that feeling. I’ve had that pressure from myself because I was disappointed with the results and it was a really horrible time, but both from the supporters’ point of view and certainly from the owner’s point of view, I got the feeling that people were willing me to succeed.
"I’m not saying we’ve succeeded, but we’ve turned it round a little bit and we are making progress. I’ve been here 14 months but there’s an awful lot of hard work ahead of us if we’re going to be successful.”
Jewell says he’s approaching today’s game as he does every other Championship match: "I look at Barnsley like I look at every game. I’ve said it at every press conference — it’ll be tough.
"Barnsley beat Peterborough last week with 10 men for 60 minutes or so. I read the report and they were unlucky against Crystal Palace.
"They will be a test, there’s no doubt about it. They will come here and people might expect it to be an easy win, but it certainly won’t be, and we’re aware of that.
"Barnsley have done terrifically well this year and I think they were talking about getting in the play-offs at one stage.
"I think we went there and then they lost the next couple of games, which dented them. But they’re a good team, they’ve got good players and it won’t be anything but difficult.”