Tomorrow’s visit to Portman Road of struggling Hull City has been labelled a must-win game by Town skipper Luke Chambers.
Nigel Adkins’s team come to town fresh from a remarkable 4-3 triumph over Norwich at the weekend, the Tigers opening the score but having to roar back from being 3-1 down to claim victory and climb to 18th place, six points above the Championship drop zone.
Chambers said: "I think Hull is a must-win game. We’ve got to take that pressure in the dressing room and when we walk out to face Hull we have to take the pressure then as well.
"If we want to achieve something, albeit there’s only a slight hope that we can reach the play-offs, we need to be beating a team like that, especially as they are fighting for their lives.”
The captain was asked if he felt Town fans were right to be disappointed at the weekend by the 0-0 home stalemate with Sheffield United and he responded: "We could have taken points off them and got ourselves in a better position to try to challenge for the play-offs. For me it was very, very disappointing that we didn’t win the game.
"But if we can win tomorrow night it will be three wins and a draw from four games, 10 points from 12, and that’s a big points haul compared to our form over recent months.
"It was also a clean sheet against Sheffield United and we’re looking to build on it against Hull. We haven’t actually conceded too many goals in our last eight or nine games, so that is pleasing, but we need to be better going forward.”
Town have only netted twice in eight home games in all competitions and are without a goal in their last four. "We all need to do a bit more going forward,” added Chambers. "We need to chip in with goals right, left and centre.
"We’ve had boys who have done very, very well this season — Waggy and Garns are in double figures, Bersant’s chipped in with nine and a lot of assists — and that’s just singling out three players.
"I’ve scored one goal this season and that’s not good enough. Jordan’s scored three but we need them from all over the pitch.
"Maybe we need to make that extra yard to get ourselves in the box and take a chance to try to score goals and try to win games a bit more than we probably have done.”
Town have 10 games remaining this season and Chambers will be doing his best to ensure there is no repeat of last season’s late collapse that saw them harvest only 11 points from a possible 30, leaving them with a 16th-place finish, the club’s lowest in 58 years.
He said: "The manager has said he thinks the top six is beyond us but we don’t want to admit it.
"We’ll still be fighting tooth and nail to get ourselves as high up the league as we can and if that takes us into contention for the play-offs, brilliant. Until it’s mathematically out of our hands I won’t be giving up on that.
"We’ve talked about injuries and I’ve heard a lot about the pitch this week.
"It’s terrible but other teams have got to come and play on it as well, so we need to make that an advantage for us or perform better. I don’t want to give up on what we set out to achieve this season.
"The last few weeks have definitely been more encouraging and we’ve definitely put in better performances, both individually and collectively, especially defensively, and our away form has been good.
"There are definitely positives at the moment but we understand people’s frustrations at the weekend.
"I think, if we’d had a fully-fit squad all season, we’d have definitely been in a stronger position and would have been in contention.
"Don’t get me wrong, we’ve made mistakes like every team in this league, but we’ve been fairly consistent and find ourselves in mid-table.
"It’s not where we want to be but we’re still fighting way above where we probably should be in terms of budget.
"I don’t want to keep going over the same things but these things do come into contention.
"If we’d had all the players that the manager signed in the summer, and we’d been able to call on all our midfielders for the whole season, it might have been different.
"We might have played better football and we might have scored more goals — but these are all ifs and buts.”