Boss Mick McCarthy has praised owner Marcus Evans for not putting him under additional pressure during the Blues struggles this season and being “consistent and neutral in his attitude" towards him regardless of Town’s position in the Championship table.
Tuesday’s 3-0 home win against Wigan saw the 17th-placed Blues move nine points clear of the relegation zone with six to play, a position in which they would appear to be all but safe.
McCarthy admits he’s happier now that the gap to the bottom three has increased and also due to the performance against the Latics.
"Of course, I feel a lot better because we played a lot better as well,” he said. "Maybe if we’d have scored against Birmingham we might have gone on the rampage there and scored another couple. I don’t know. But we didn’t when we had our chances.
"But I thought it was a really good performance the other night and a great result. It certainly took the pressure off and walking off and seeing the other results certainly helped.”
He says he has talked to owner Evans since the game: "I spoke to him yesterday and I think for the first time Marcus admitted that we’d been in a bit of a dogfight. I said ‘I’ve been telling you that for weeks!’.
"It’s nice that the owner, the boss of the place is not on [at you] because it only adds pressure - ‘We’re in a dogfight! We’ve got to get results!’.
"There’s never been any of that whether we’ve been going for the play-offs or down near the bottom.
"Completely consistent and neutral in his attitude towards me, which is great, he’s always the same, and I appreciate that.
"But it’s taken the pressure off all of us because it could have gone the other way. If we’d got beaten and the others had won on Tuesday, the gap would have been three points and we’d got Fulham, Burton and Newcastle, that would have been a tough task.
"They’re still going to be tough but they’re a damned sight easier when you’re nine points clear of the bottom three.”