Town striker Freddie Sears is adamant Town have enough talent and sufficient strength in depth to sustain a play-off push, ahead of Saturday's away game against fellow top-six contenders Birmingham City.
A question mark may have appeared following the FA Cup third round replay defeat at Portsmouth, when boss Mick McCarthy made 11 changes from the previous league draw with Preston three days earlier, but Sears believes seventh-placed Town have what it takes to at least match last season’s sixth-place finish.
He said: "It’s hard to judge boys who haven’t been playing week in, week out. I know Portsmouth are League Two but they have players who are playing every week.
"No one wanted to lose that game and we are all disappointed because we wanted a win for ourselves and the fans, and we wanted to have a crack at Bournemouth.
"But it wasn’t meant to be and now we’ve just got to concentrate on the league and get back in that top six.
"At the minute the results we’re looking for are those of Brighton, Sheffield Wednesday, Burnley and Birmingham. There are probably one or two teams outside of that — maybe Brentford, maybe Wolves — that could come with a late surge.
"With 19 games to go we’re in a kind of mini league. We’re looking to try to get above seventh and we could finish third or fourth, even first or second, because you just don’t know in this division and there’s still a long way to go.”
Town head for the Midlands tomorrow to take on a Birmingham side fresh from a 3-0 win at Derby last week and Sears & Co have an excellent away record to protect — unbeaten in seven on the road, a run comprising five straight wins sandwiched by a couple of draws.
Sears added: "It has maybe suited us a little bit better away from home — that’s what the results suggest.
"The pace we have on the counter-attack at times is scary with me, Ryan Fraser and even Murph. Not many teams can cope with that when we’re away from home.
"It’s obviously difficult at home when teams come and sit in. You have to take the game to them a bit more but thankfully it has been working pretty well recently.
"Birmingham have surprised most of us. They’ve stuck at it and they are picking up results. They have had a bit of a purple patch recently and beat Derby at the weekend, so they are going to be flying with confidence.
"It’s a big game for both teams and whoever wins it could really go on and push on to the top six.”
Meanwhile, Sears feels there are plenty of other players who can match his own feat of taking the step-up from League One to the Championship in his stride, adding: "It’s all about getting the opportunity to prove it, like Conor Washington going from Peterborough to QPR this week.
"All it takes is a couple of good games when you are scoring goals and there will be interest from the Championship. From what I’ve seen there are definitely players in League One who can make the step-up.
"George Moncur, at my previous club Colchester, could do it. He’s done really well since he’s been there and it’s quite a similar situation to me I suppose.
"He was at West Ham, didn’t really play as often as he would have liked and it didn’t really work out the way he wanted it to.
"He had to take the step back to try to move forward again but I’m sure that sooner or later George will be playing at a higher level.
"I think there’s more quality in the Championship. There are a lot of good players at this level, probably Premier League standard players to be honest.
"You look at the teams that came down last season — Hull, QPR and Burnley — and none of them are at the top of the league.
"That shows what a strong league this is and fair play to us because we seem to be hanging in and around the top six again.”