Mick McCarthy is happy with Town’s current standing of sixth in the Championship at just over the halfway stage of the campaign.
He says like any other manager he can cite games when his side ought to have won rather than drawn and drawn rather than lost: "I can go through all the league and say we could have more points but I guarantee every other manager could say the same, the ones in the bottom three could say exactly the same.
"You look at Christmas, if we’d gone to Donny and drawn and gone to Bournemouth and drawn and then beaten Charlton 3-0, we would have thought ‘What a great Christmas that was’. It’s perception. It’s bonkers.
"You pick up the points, stick them in your pocket and we’ll see what we’ve got at the end of the season. Halfway through the season we’re in the top six and I’m delighted with that.”
He admits he’s not happy that Town have conceded leads in a number of recent games, but prefers to look at the positives: "Of course, I don’t like doing that. The Charlton one took a deflection and I watched that game again and I thought they deserved a draw.
"In the second half there weren’t too many chances and it ends up being a 91st minute goal where it takes a deflection and goes in.
"We are where we are. I want to win every game. I could sit here and say I wish I’d got maximum points but it’s not going to happen and nobody else is going to get that.
"You can talk about things that go wrong or you can be delighted with the things that go right. We’ve scored more goals, we’ve played better football, we’ve been more attack-minded and maybe doing that you’re going to concede one.
"But we’re in the top six and not many people said we were going to be in the top six, maybe me and even I’d have doubted it!”