Mick McCarthy’s repeated warnings that Town could yet find themselves drawn back into the thick of the relegation dogfight were shown to be prescient after Saturday’s last-gasp 2-1 defeat at bottom-of-the-table Bristol City. That result and away victories for Sheffield Wednesday and Birmingham saw the Blues drop to 21st in the Championship, six points from the danger zone but with the bottom three all having a game in hand on them.
McCarthy said: "That was always going to be the case and I kept saying it when we were doing well and everybody was patting us on the back.
"That was nice, but it could happen because you can lose two or three games on the bounce in this league.
"That wasn’t a game we should have lost, but we have. They’ve now come closer to us and the others have jumped over us and concertinaed the league up again.”
McCarthy made his anger all too evident after the game and felt his team only had themselves to blame: "Our result didn’t go our way, we f***** it up, nobody else.
"We can’t do anything about Birmingham, we can’t do anything about Sheffield Wednesday, we can’t do anything about anyone around us, Bristol City. We should have won the game and made a b****** of it.”
Meanwhile, winning goalscorer Jon Stead dismissed suggestions that scoring against his old club was particularly sweet: "I’ve enjoyed my time at all the clubs I’ve been at and it’s never nice to score against them.
"If you’ve had a really bad time at a club or you’ve been treated badly by the club then it might be the case, but that’s certainly not the case for me. I loved it at Ipswich.
"More importantly, it was nice to score for the position that we’re in and obviously my situation of wanting to get more games and more goals. The manner of the goal and the points that it’s put on the board for us is the most pleasing thing.”
Similarly, Stead played down the idea that scoring against his old Sunderland boss Mick McCarthy meant more than usual: "Does it heck, no! If anything I let him down when I was at Sunderland, so it’s not one of those at all.
"It’s about Bristol City and getting three points and whatever the manner that that came about, it’s obviously pleasing.”