Town boss Mick McCarthy is confident that the Blues, who face Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough on Saturday, can start to climb the Championship table now that David McGoldrick and Jonny Williams are back from injury and Freddie Sears has ended his goalless run by netting twice in three games.
The Blues, who have struggled for goals and recently went five games without scoring, are currently in 16th place, six points from their pre-season target of the play-offs, but only four from the relegation zone. They have won only once in their last eight games.
"I’ve never been anything else,” McCarthy insisted. "That’s always been the case if we could get the goalscorers.
"Freddie’s had a 38-game drought and he’s got two now and Didzy’s back and he’s scoring.
"I think Tom Lawrence has been a really good signing for us, despite whatever else has been going on, his performances have been consistent. So there are a lot of pluses.”
While Leon Best and David McGoldrick have both said they’re itching to revive their strike partnership from their time as youngsters in Nottingham and in the Southampton academy, McCarthy says it’s a different pairing which has usually been working together in training recently.
"I’ve played Freddie and Didz, they’ve been a good partnership, they scored the goals [against Rotherham],” he said.
"Didzy and Besty was a long time ago, a few games and a few years have gone by since then.
"They haven’t really trained together, I’ve had Freddie and Didzy. I’ve mixed the strikers up but Freddie and Didzy are the partnership that’s playing, so they’re playing together, they’re training together predominantly.
"And to be fair, the 10 minutes that Leon and Luke Varney had [against Aston Villa] was almost a productive 10 minutes, they were a real handful the pair of them.”
Looking ahead to the game against the Owls, who are currently eighth in the division on 24 points, eight places and six points ahead of Town, the Blues boss was keeping his cards close to his chest regarding whether he'd stick with the attacking XI he fielded against Rotherham or alter his approach to any degree.
"You’ll have to wait and see,” McCarthy said. "I thought we played well enough last week in the Rotherham game, in what was a difficult game.
"I think we’ve scored a fantastic second goal and I thought the first goal was a good goal from the freekick, a great finish by Freddie, and we created a few chances.
"We gave two lousy goals away last week, which almost caused an upset and certainly caused the atmosphere which pervaded the ground.
"I was pleased with the way we played and I think we’ve got to have an attacking threat, we’ve got to be able to score goals and the irony was that we scored two and conceded two.”
The Town boss dismissed suggestions that with younger players such as Grant Ward and Adam Webster having been brought into the side in the summer and focal point frontman Daryl Murphy moving on, this year might have been viewed as a transitional season from the start.
"I was never into giving any of that about a transitional season, they’re other people’s words, not mine,” McCarthy said.
"I didn’t see it as that, no. [There have been] sets of circumstances, Murph’s not fit at the moment at Newcastle, he may have had his calf injury here and he wouldn’t have played, and he scored 12 for us last year.
"But we lost him at a time when it was difficult to replace him like-for-like, if you can do that. And other sets of circumstances have just affected us. If we can get back to having a fit squad and the lads scoring goals, we’re only going to get better.”
McCarthy believes Wednesday will be among the contenders for promotion come May.
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"I do, they’ve had huge investment into that team,” he said. "I think about Gary Hooper, Steven Fletcher, Fernando Forestieri and Barry Bannen.
"[Head coach Carlos Carvalhal] impressed me the very first time we played against them. We beat them here 2-1, they had Joao playing up front and they were a real handful that day.
"And he’s continued to impress me, Carlos, and he’s a good guy as well, I've really enjoyed his company when I’ve spoken to him.”
Town have drawn all four of their games at Hillsborough 1-1 under McCarthy and the Blues boss has never lost at the Owls' home ground as manager of any of his clubs. His only defeat to Sheffield Wednesday anywhere was a 2-0 League Cup loss at the Den in a League Cup tie in 1995 during his time in charge of Millwall.
"Don’t put the mockers on that one!” he laughed. "Don’t alert everybody to that. Let’s hope it continues.”
With left-back Jonas Knudsen returning from his back injury, the Blues boss will revert to his regular back four with skipper Luke Chambers at right-back and Adam Webster and Christophe Berra at the heart of the defence. Bartosz Bialkowski will be in goal.
McCarthy is unlikely to stray too far away from last week’s team but may look to add some more bite to the centre of midfield, which could see either Jonathan Douglas or Kevin Bru join Cole Skuse in centre midfield in place of Teddy Bishop.
Grant Ward is likely to be on the right with Tom Lawrence on the left and McGoldrick in behind Sears up front.
Wednesday are expected to have keeper Keiren Westwood, a Town target back in Paul Jewell’s time as boss, available again after a back problem, which has seen him miss the last two games and Carvalhal has no other injury worries at present with striker Steven Fletcher OK despite suffering a head injury in the 2-0 defeat at Derby last week.
Historically, the record is very evenly balanced, Town having won 18 games (17 in the league), Wednesday 17 (16) and with 12 (11) matches having ended in draws.
Town's last defeat to the Owls was the 3-0 loss in Chris Hutchings's one game in charge in October 2012 ahead of McCarthy's appointment. The Blues' last reverse at Hillsborough was a 1-0 defeat in February 2010 during Roy Keane's time as boss.
In April at Hillsborough, then-16-year-old Andre Dozzell came off the bench to score a debut goal as the Blues drew 1-1 with the Owls, a result which meant Town had no realistic chance of making the play-offs.
Dozzell came on at half-time and headed home Liam Feeney’s cross in the 71st minute, Fernando Forestieri having given the home side the lead three minutes before the break.
At Portman Road in the opening home league game of last season, Tommy Smith nodded the winner from close range eight minutes after the break as the Blues came from behind to beat Wednesday 2-1.
Ross Wallace had put the Owls in front in the 19th minute but Freddie Sears equalised two minutes later.
Blues midfielder Giles Coke, who recently underwent another knee operation, spent five years with Wednesday having signed from Motherwell in July 2010, making 77 starts and 24 sub appearances and scoring seven goals. He joined Town in the summer of 2015 having been released by the Owls.
Three of the Blues’ strikers have had loan spells with the Owls. David McGoldrick spent a month there during the early part of 2011/12, scoring once in three starts and one sub appearance, while Leon Best was on loan at Hillsborough for three months at the end of 2013/14, scoring five goals in 12 starts and three sub appearances.
Luke Varney had a spell on loan with Wednesday when a Derby player at the end of the 2008/09 season and then spent all but a month of the following campaign at Hillsborough. In total he scored 11 goals in 35 starts and 14 sub appearances.
No current member of the Wednesday squad has featured for the Blues but keeper-coach Andy Rhodes worked in the same role at Town under Joe Royle and Jim Magilton, while ex-Blues left-back Neil Thompson coaches in their academy.
Saturday’s referee is Andrew Madley from West Yorkshire, who has shown 47 yellow cards and no red in 15 games so far this season. Coincidentally, his younger brother Robert was in charge when the sides met at Hillsborough in April.
Madley senior’s last Town game was the 1-0 defeat at Cardiff in March in which he kept his cards in his pocket throughout.
Prior to that he was in charge of the 2-1 home victory over Wolves in November 2014 in which he booked Luke Chambers, Hyam and Bru as well as two visiting players.
In 2013/14 he officiated in the 1-1 home draw with Nottingham Forest and the 2-0 victory over Reading at Portman Road.
The season prior to that he refereed his first Blues game, the 2-1 home defeat to Derby County, Paul Jewell’s last match as manager of Town.
Squad from: Bialkowski, Gerken, Chambers (c), Emmanuel, Knudsen, Kenlock, Berra, Webster, Digby, Skuse, Douglas, Bru, Williams, Bishop, Grant, Ward, Lawrence, Sears, Best, McGoldrick, Varney.