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McCarthy: Battle for Sixth Wide Open - Ipswich Town News

Boss Mick McCarthy believes the battle for sixth place is wide open with current incumbents Reading having one of the more difficult run-ins.

The Blues, two points behind in eighth, are in what looks like a seven-way fight for the final play-off position with the Royals, Brighton, Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest, Blackburn and Watford, who have a game in hand on everyone else.

"When you look at Reading’s fixtures I think it’s wide open,” McCarthy said. "They play Leicester next. But Bournemouth are the team that are flying, eight out of 10 they’ve won.

"It’s a remarkable set of results they’ve had and they are a good team. They’ve spent a few quid, mind, but they are doing exceptionally well. Our next two fixtures [Doncaster at home today and Watford away next week] will determine how big that game on Easter Monday will be.”

Overall, the Town boss was happy with the three points from two away games at Blackburn and Huddersfield.

"I’m always happy with an away point, so had we gone to Blackburn and drawn and drawn at Huddersfield and then beat Doncaster and we’d got five points, I’d think that would be a fair hit from two hard away trips and a home game.

"We’ve got to follow up that performance and victory at Huddersfield on Tuesday with three points here, but that won’t be easy.”

He says he and the squad find out about the scores elsewhere soon after the end of their own games: "Somebody tells you, I don’t go looking for it. In our home dressing room we’ve got a television with the results coming up.

"Somebody will have been listening to the scores, one of the lads who’s not been playing will generally have the results and we get them passed on to us fairly quickly.”

After Tuesday’s win some fans might come to Portman Road expecting an easy victory with the Blues going into an early lead, but McCarthy says that’s unrealistic.

"It won’t happen,” he added. "Let’s hope it does, it would be fabulous, but how often has that happened? Never. Well, Derby and look what happened there. It could have been 8-0 at half-time and it ended up four-all.

"Maybe that’s just the nature of the league. I don’t come in asking for patience, we want to win the game, we’ll play it the way we normally play it and we hope that we get the three points.”

Town’s home form has been good this season, so does McCarthy believe someone might find themselves on the end of a thrashing at Portman Road at some point soon? "It would be nice, but I’d still take a 2-0 victory.”

The Run-Ins

Reading: Leicester (H), Wigan (A), Middlesbrough (H), Doncaster (A), Burnley (H).

Brighton: Charlton (H), Huddersfield (A), Blackpool (H), Yeovil (H) and Nottingham Forest (A).

Ipswich: Doncaster (H), Watford (A), Bournemouth (H), Burnley (A), Sheffield Wednesday (H).

Bournemouth: Yeovil (A), Sheffield Wednesday (H), Ipswich (A), Nottingham Forest (H), Millwall (A).

Nottingham Forest: QPR (A), Birmingham (H), Leeds (A), Bournemouth (A), Brighton (H).

Blackburn: Sheffield Wednesday (A), Yeovil (H), Birmingham (A), Charlton (A), Wigan (H).

Watford: Millwall (A), Ipswich (H), QPR (A), Derby (A), Charlton (A), Huddersfield (H).

To assess how the battle for the final play-off place might pan out in the final few weeks, try out the TWTD League Calculator.

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