Town boss Mick McCarthy felt his side thoroughly deserved their 2-1 win at Fulham. Daryl Murphy netted his 20th and 21st goals of the season in the first half with Ross McCormack pulling one back for the Cottagers in the 74th minute.
"A deserved win, I think,” McCarthy said. "We had some good chances, certainly in the first half. The reality is that if they get a goal back the confidence will flow a bit more and they did through a mis-hit.
"It was a great finish by McCormack, but you’d expect that from a player of his ability but we deserved to win.”
But he says there was no panic from his side even after they had conceded following a Tommy Smith mistake: "There wasn’t really, we had a good shape to us today and we defended well.
"I know what it’s like when you’re down there, it’s difficult to play and be full of confidence and it doesn’t always flow.
"You can see they’ve got good players, once or twice they opened us up in the first half, but we didn’t really have to deal with it because the final pass wasn’t great. Overall it was a really good performance by us.”
McCarthy once again had praise for Daryl Murphy, who became the first Town player to hit 20 league goals since David Johnson scored 22 in the 1999/00 promotion campaign, although the Town boss says there is another claim on the fifth minute opener.
"Freddie’s claiming the first one, I think, but I’m not bothered. Murph got a really sore on his nose when he headed it.
"He headed it and I think he headbutted Tunnicliffe was well. The nose doesn’t have an effect on somebody’s skull, does it? He’s doing well, isn’t he? He played well.”
Once again asked why the Irishman, who broke his nose netting the opening goal, has hit such a rich vein of form at 31 years of age, he added: "I keep having to answer the same question and I keep answering it the same way.
"He’s settled, he’s got the number nine, he’s a centre forward, he’s not playing wide left or wide right or doing anything else. He’s living in the area, he’s not on loan any more.
"He was given the number nine and he works damned hard with TC in front of goal. We’ve been here for two years so he’s been doing that work for two years and it’s paying off. TC is as good a coach as I’ve seen with the strikers he’s excellent.”
Having apparently got their brief downturn out of their system, the Blues remain fourth, just two points off the top, but the Blues boss is staying typically grounded: "I keep saying; it’s what you end up with on May 2nd that matters.
"I said we’d have a tough time at some stage and that everyone else would have that too. We’ve recovered a bit with two wins on the bounce and now we’ve got to do it again next Saturday.”
He says Noel Hunt suffered a knee injury in the late clash with Shaun Hutchinson which saw the Blues striker carried off on a stretcher.
"He’s got a sore knee, so I’m not going to make any judgements until Monday when it’s cooled down and we can get a scan done."
Fulham manager Kit Symons felt his team allowed Town to score at crucial times: "Conceding the goals when we did, in the first five minutes and the last minute of the first half, we were always giving ourselves a lot to do.
"In the second half I thought we showed a lot of endeavour, people worked very hard and certainly dug in and battled.
"We maybe lacked that little bit of composure and quality and we got ourselves back into the game with a slightly fortuitous goal, to be honest, but then we didn’t quite have enough to get something out of it.”