Boss Mick McCarthy believes Saturday’s opponents QPR will be the team to beat in this year’s Championship. The Blues manager expects last year’s three relegated Premier League sides — Rangers, Wigan and Reading — all to be contenders come May.
He says QPR ought to be right up there with the players that they have: "Very much so. They’re arguably the best squad, although some might argue that Reading, Wigan, Bolton, Nottingham Forest also seem to be putting good squads together.
"And, of course, in Harry Redknapp they’ve got arguably the best manager, the most experienced.
"I’m not saying the most experienced of the Championship, but he has the most experience in all his dealings wherever he’s been. And he’s been very good at it, Harry.
"You’ve got to put them as one of the favourites to get promoted, but that doesn’t mean to say that they can’t get beaten on Saturday.”
Despite the likes of Scott Parker being linked with moves to Loftus Road, McCarthy says he’s not jealous of Redknapp’s far greater spending power: "Scott isn’t going to make it any worse, that’s for sure. I think he’ll enhance any squad.
"My job is my job and I love doing it. There’s no point in being envious because it doesn’t get you anything.
"Harry will be under more pressure than some of the rest of us to get to where everyone wants to get to, back to the Premier League, because of the squad he’s got.
"With that squad you’ll get pressure, but we’re all under it. There’ll be some of the lads at the bottom of the league at the end of the season who will be under pressure and they won’t have anywhere near the squads of Wigan, Reading and QPR.
"We’ll see, but I just think they’ve got everything there that can get them promoted.”
The Town boss says the relegated sides could make up the top three this season and expects to see them all in the top six at the very least: "I think so.
"It would appear to me that it hit QPR harder than anybody at the time when they were going down because of the money that they’ve spent.
"But they’ve started well and it doesn’t appear to me that there are too many negative stories coming out of there. OK, some players will leave, but they seem to have plenty of money to replace them.”