Town loanee Richard Chaplow has insisted the team’s recent form slump — six defeats in their 11 league games this year — does not spell the end of their promotion challenge.
Chaplow has scanned the fixture list that sees Mick McCarthy’s men take on promotion rivals Brentford and Middlesbrough in their next two games and he is buzzing about the final weeks of the season.
The Millwall loanee said: "Every game is a big game when you get to this stage of the season and we’ll be looking to put right things that have gone a little bit wrong in the last couple of games at Norwich and Leeds. It’s going to be tough and every game is going to be an important one for us.
"You’ve probably heard it many times before but when people say every game is going to be like a cup final it’s very true. We want to cement our place in the top six — and hopefully push on to the top two — and to do that we have to start winning games.
"It’s an important part of the season because we are coming off the back of two losses. We need to put things right and get a win but if it doesn’t go as we want it to there are still going to be plenty of games for us to recapture the winning form we had earlier and get back into the play-off places.
"We will be looking to take the game to Brentford and get the three points but if it doesn’t happen we will just have to move on and keep going again. There will still be 10 games left after Brentford and that’s another 30 points to play for.”
Chaplow won promotion to the Premier League with previous club Southampton and added: "I was speaking to some of the lads and saying it reminds me of Southampton the way the group is with each other, extremely close both on and off the pitch.
"That will all help going into the back end of the season. Of course you are down initially after a loss but you learn to move on to the next challenge.
"It’s relentless at this level and you need to be as consistent as possible on the pitch. Also, with the environment that is bred here, it will hopefully pay dividends for us.”
Photo: ITFC