Boss Mick McCarthy has dismissed suggestions that Town have taken a cautious approach this season.
With the Blues starting to drift out of the play-off picture, McCarthy was asked whether he needed to have a less cautious outlook in the season’s remaining games.
"I haven’t been cautious,” he said. "For most of the time we’ve played 4-4-2 and even when we’ve played 4-3-3 we’ve probably ended up with two centre-backs, a full-back and a sitting midfield player and six in attack.
"I’m not cautious, I don’t sit back. We go and stop them playing from the front. I think that’s a misconception. We might have been tough and hard to beat but far from cautious.”
He does feel, however, that the Blues should be scoring more goals from midfield with only six having come from the engine room all season and one of those, Paul Anderson’s at home to Millwall, probably really an own goal.
"Very much so, we talked about this a few months ago and I’m not sure it’s changed since, despite the fact that they’ve practiced their finishing," he added.
"You’ll get certain types that will get in the box and score from midfield or certain types of defenders who will score. It’s not really happened for us from midfield.”
Overall, he’s not concerned where the goals come from as long as someone’s getting them: "We’ve scored more goals than we did last season and conceded more.
"Ultimately, I don’t think it matters where they come from, providing you get a chunk of them and it’s more than most of the others.
"It’s very rare that you’ll get more goals than any other team unless they’re being spread around. So we need to spread them around, we’ll keep practicing and if it doesn’t then, as always, things will change in the summer, naturally things will change. And I’ll look to do different things, depending on what happens.
"We have built a solid platform to kick on from next season in terms of the back five or six players, our keepers and back four are in good shape.
"In midfield I think we’re in good shape, things will change, as I’ve just been saying. And there are decisions to be made on other players. But we’ll be all right, we’ll be fine.”
As much as anything, McCarthy has been pleased with his team’s reliability throughout the campaign: "I think performances have been consistent. I don’t want to say it just before we play a game, but it’s not been like last season where we got slapped a couple of times, we’ve never looked like that.
"We’ve been pretty consistent with the performances, which is probably suggested by where we are.
"We’ve not been up and down, so we’ve not been in the bottom end and when we’ve had the chance to beat people we’ve not really taken it or we’ve let somebody score when we’ve been in front, which has been apparent, and that's why we are where we are and not in the top six.”
With season ticket prices having been announced yesterday, McCarthy says supporters can look back on a decent 2013/14: "The fans have been great, they’ve been fabulous. I’m not sending out messages asking them to come because it’s hard earnt.
"I think we have to try and entertain them and I think we have done, certainly this season. I think we’ve had a good season.
"It could be better but it was always going to be a bit of a transition from where we were last season.”