Does the fact that Town have missed out on the play-offs, where they finished last term, mean this season must be regarded as a failure?
Midfielder Cole Skuse offered the view recently that he saw it that way but captain Luke Chambers isn’t so sure, explaining: "I don’t like the word failure because it’s not as if we have completely blown it.
"We have maybe just lacked a bit of squad depth and a bit of quality when we have needed it. Whether you change that by spending money is a question for other people to decide. I think we’ve had a good season but I understand the fans’ frustration of late.
"They want to be entertained and we haven’t been scoring enough goals at home, which has maybe been our downfall.
"Last season our home form was the bedrock of the success we had and this season we haven’t been able to match it, which is something we need to look at and maybe approach games in a different way next season.”
Chambers & Co have come under fire in recent weeks, particularly at Portman Road, and he was delighted with last week’s 3-2 home win over already-relegated MK Dons, even if he was forced to surrender his ever-present league record as teenager Josh Emmanuel replaced him at right-back.
He said: "It was important that we got the home win last week against MK Dons because our fans haven’t had much to shout about at Portman Road in the last few weeks. I was delighted that we got the three points and we would love to get another three at Derby on Saturday.
"It would be great to go up there and upset them, like we did at Middlesbrough in our last away game. We’ll be going up there fully prepared and ready to try to finish the season on a high note.
"We want to go up there and do ourselves justice, give everything we can and possibly derail Derby.
"With my Forest links I’ll be doing all I can to beat them. When I was at Forest it was massive rivalry with Derby — we had some good games and some incidents along the way.
"There was no love lost between us and things have changed since I was at Forest. We made the play-offs two years running and they were struggling but the power has shifted a little bit.”
Chambers turned to his dressing room colleagues and added: "I think they all know my feelings towards them.
"The gaffer makes no secret of the fact that he can never fault the lads for lack of trying, whereas in the past when I first joined there were a lot of fingers that could have been pointed.
"I think this club has come a long way since the manager took over — don’t forget we were at the bottom of the table after finishing 15th the previous season. Back then we were just flirting with the bottom half of the table.
"With hindsight it’s easy to say we have finished seventh or eighth and the teams above us are the teams who have spent all the money. That might be the reason they are above us in the top six and fighting their way towards promotion.
"But we can still hold our heads high and think we have had a good season, although we have not reached the heights we expected to reach. Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and admit we weren’t quite good enough in the end.”