Boss Mick McCarthy says the Blues have made almost constant progress in the right direction since he took charge in November 2012, but questions how long any side could maintain that sort of consistency. Town go into today’s game at Huddersfield looking to end a run of three successive defeats which has seen them drop to 10th, seven points off the play-off places following Sheffield Wednesday's 0-0 draw at Hull City last night.
"I think that as a team, as a squad, as a club we’ve been pretty good over the last three and a half years, maybe constantly batted above where everybody thought we were going to be,” he said. "I wonder how long you can do that for. I don’t know.
"We’ve done it pretty consistently so far but we’ve had a bit of a dip and what we have to be careful about is that suddenly not everything is wrong, we have to continue believing in what we do and hopefully get a few players back, get Skusey back, Ryan [Fraser] back and try and get Didzy back in the team come March.
"But what we really need is some results over this piece until the international break when those lads might be back.”
Having made the best of the resources available to him during his time with Town, does he believe there are discussions to be had with owner Marcus Evans in order for the Blues to continue to make progress in seasons to come?
"Perhaps, but that’s not for now, that’s for when we see where we finish up because I think everybody gets frustrated - the players, I could see that on Tuesday night,” McCarthy added.
"When it’s constantly been going up, it’s great, everybody’s coming in with a smile on their face, everybody loves it, the fans love it, I love it, it’s a lot easier to come in. But when it gets tough it really is tough, it’s difficult.
"People start questioning everything, but the answer just for now has to be within here, with me, TC and the players.”
He says he’s come through one tougher spell while with the Blues back towards the end of his first season in charge: "I think going to Millwall and drawing 0-0 and everybody else winning and us ending up being three points above relegation with Leicester to come next was probably the toughest part because we really were in a relegation scrap.
"But I’d say this is the second one because we’re going in the opposite direction at the minute, whereas always in the last three and a half years it seems we’ve been on the up. Unfortunately at the moment we’re on the slippery slope and we want to arrest that.”