Boss Mick McCarthy felt Town’s 2-0 victory over Brighton at the Amex was a “huge win” at a difficult ground to visit. Second-half goals from Tommy Smith and Daryl Murphy saw ninth-placed Town to the three points against fellow play-off challengers Albion.
"A huge win, it’s a difficult place to come and play,” he said. "It’s a fabulous place to come and play, I might add.
"We’ve done things right today. We’ve defended when we’ve had to and we’ve taken our chances. Last week I was saying that it was the reverse.
"I thought we played well last week but didn’t take chances and conceded poor goals. I’m sure when you ask their manager he’ll be saying exactly the same as that.”
He believes Brighton are a decent team: "They’re a good side. They’ve got good players. They play out from the back a lot, they play some good football.
"Gerks has made saves and they’ve had a couple of flicks and things but I think we had our fair amount of chances. As an away performance it’s a very good one.”
McCarthy was again delighted with central defenders Smith and Christophe Berra, who he said was fine despite taking a knock: "They are that outstanding that Chambo can’t get a game at centre-half. And he’s a very competent right-back certainly.”
The Town boss felt Daryl Murphy put in as good a display as he’s ever seen from him as he took his goals tally for the season to 10: "If he’s ever played better than that I want to see it.
"His hold-up play, his running in the channels, he’s up there on his own, he comes back and defends.
"I think it was down to work with TC him getting across the defender [for the goal]. He said it came off his shoulder but he got across the defender and it was a great goal for him because I think he deserved it with his performance.”
McCarthy was similarly impressed with loanee Jonny Williams’s performance, the Wales international having created the goal for Murphy having taken a fair amount of stick from his parent club’s rivals.
"The Palace reject, eh? I’ll take him if that’s what he is!” the Blues manager joked. "I don’t think so somehow. He’s a good player, he gives us something different, that’s for sure.”
The Town boss is pleased that Town remain in the play-off hunt with nine games to go: "We’ve still got a chance.
"We’re playing Derby on Tuesday and Nottingham Forest on Saturday and I said I’d probably know where we are at the end of this week. I might not, it might still be all in the mix. It’s lovely that we’ve got a chance, that’s nice.”
The Blues have completed a double over Brighton this season having also won 2-0 in the home fixture in September, but McCarthy says his team have had to work for their six points: "I think we’ve played well in both games and we’ve had to play as well as we can in both games.
"We had to play well at our place and we’ve had to do it again, and I think slightly differently here. We’ve had to sit back at times and let them have it at the back and I think they might feel a little bit that they’ve been mugged.
"But I think we’ve had plenty of chances and we’ve had one in the net as well when Jonny Williams was onside [in the first half], by the way. He was onside. But it didn’t make any difference, so we’ll let them off.”
Brighton manager Oscar Garcia thought his side should have won the match: "We were the better team, we created more than enough chances to win this game but we didn’t take them.
"I’m happy with the performance, but disappointed with the two goals that we conceded because we switched off twice and they punished us. They did very little to win this game, but at the end of the day they scored two goals."