“Stick with us,” that’s Mick McCarthy’s message to fans however this afternoon’s home game against Leeds might be going. The second-placed Blues, who have lost just once in 15 games, go into the match in confident mood, but the Town manager warns that the visitors, who are in 15th, will be no pushovers having beaten leaders Derby last week.
"It’s great that they’re expecting us to beat them but as we’ve said before, it just doesn’t work like that,” McCarthy said.
"Bournemouth expected to beat us and Charlton expected to beat us. We’ve seen it down here.
"We had leads against Blackburn and Huddersfield and they both played well in the second half, even with 10 men Blackburn got a wonderful freekick in the last minute of the game.
"I would say ‘Stick with us’ and however it’s going, however it starts, however it goes, however it ends up, they’ve got a team they should be proud of and support. The support has been great, in the last two away games it was wonderful.”
He says it will be by no means easy to stay in the top two: "You saw the game last week and how tough that was.
"You saw the Bournemouth game and how tough it was to get a two-all draw out of that, and every other game we’ve played as been just equally as tough.
"You’ve got to scrap it out. I saw Charlton manager Bob Peeters say that they haven’t got a goalscorer and we had and that was the difference. And that was, something as simple as that.
"I said to him after the game that I put two strikers on and while I knew they might give me a chance of a goal, the reality was that I put fresh legs on. I wasn’t going to get beaten by having a couple of lads who were knackered.
"It’s staying with it, eking it out. When you guys come and ask me afterwards ‘Mick, is that a good point?’. Of course it’s a good point.
"Just take it, put it on the league table, it counts. And then you might make it up somewhere else. It’s all that, it’s relentless, the league, and I think we’ve got to be relentless with it.”
He says it was Town’s run of good form which probably edged them to victory in what was a very tight game at the Valley, sub Noel Hunt netting a dramatic 95th minute winner.
"You get a bit of momentum and that momentum carried us over the line at Charlton, although they’ve been going well too," he added.
"It’s that never-say-die attitude, that belief because in the last 10 minutes we were the team that was pushing for it, definitely.
"It had been a really good game. I’ve seen the stats, they’re almost identical, 50-50 in shots, balls in the box, crosses, percentage of passes, how many passes.
"I watched it again on Tuesday morning and it was like that. I thought we played much better having watched it again than I probably did on the Saturday.
"And I didn’t think they were as dominant or had as many chances as I did on Saturday. That’s the case when you’re sat on the bench.
"That momentum probably took us over the line. Where does it come from and how do you lose it?
"You thought that we might have lost it when we lost at Cardiff, but we’ve picked it up again. But it’ll be a tough game against Leeds, they’re a good side. I’ve watched a couple of videos from their games and they’ve impressed me.”
McCarthy had no argument with a recent description of his side as "belligerent, hard-working and stubborn”.
"Well, they say you get a team in the mirror image of their manager,” he said. "I like to think they’ve got a bit more ability than I had.
"But I’ll take that, hard-working, belligerent, stubborn, professional, organised, disciplined. All of those words that people don’t particularly like.
"Some want sexy, attractive and all that, but I doubt any of our 2,000 fans walked away from Charlton on Saturday complaining that we were all those things because when I came here, one of the things which got levelled at them was that they weren’t those things. And if you’re soft in this league, you get beaten, that’s for sure.”
He added: "There’s no other secret except hard work and getting results. Maybe we’ve had a bit of luck, which you need. But we’ve had it the other way around with goals on 90-odd minutes.
"There isn’t a magic formula to it, there really isn’t. It is based on hard work to start with and I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with that.
"Teams with bigger budgets, not so much more illustrious histories than us, maybe recent histories, that all counts for nothing. It’s only what you’ve got on the pitch on a Saturday afternoon or a Tuesday evening.”
Leeds boss Neil Redfearn described Town as a "typical Mick McCarthy side’, which again the Blues manager took positively.
"I’d take that as a compliment,” he said. "Whatever label people want to put as a ‘Mick McCarthy team’.
"If it’s a typical Mick McCarthy team and we’re second and we’re playing well, we’re scoring goals and we’re winning games, and I’ve done it at Wolves and I’ve done it at Sunderland, I’ll take that as a compliment, absolutely.”