Striker James Norwood says keeper Tomas Holy is a “confidence killer” in training, such is the standard of the big Czech’s current form.
Holy, who will face his former club Gillingham on Saturday, has made some crucial saves in recent games as the Blues have secured four successive clean sheets in the league. A fifth against the Gills would equal a club record.
"He’s made some really important saves for us at crucial times,” Norwood said. "The one just before half-time against Shrewsbury, he made a few crucial saves against the MK Dons that have kept us in the game.
"He’s a massive, massive fella in goal and he’s difficult to beat at the best of times, but when he’s in this sort of form, you know he’s going be really difficult to beat.”
Quizzed on what it’s like to face the 6ft 9in-tall glovesman, reputed to be the third tallest keeper in world, in training, Norwood laughed: "Not enjoyable! It’s sort of a confidence killer for a striker. He’s just so daunting in goal, his presence is huge and if you can score past him, you’re going to be able to score past a lot of goalkeepers at this level.”
He says 26-year-old Holy is as good as any goalkeeper he has played with: "Yes, I think he’s right up there. The Tranmere keeper Scot Davies] and him are the two best I’ve played with.”
Norwood says even the strikers take pride in the current run of four clean sheets in the last four league games.
"Of course, we defend from the front!” he laughed. "We score goals as a team, we keep clean sheets as a team, the way the gaffer wants to press and things like that.
"Myself, Kayden, Keano and Jordan are going to be the first line of defence. We win together, we lose together, that’s the same with scoring goals and keeping clean sheets.”
He added: "I think you have to be able to do everything. There’ll be some teams who go up playing free-flowing attacking football not worrying that they have to defend because they’ll win 4-3.
"But we’re looking to keep clean sheets, we’re looking to score goals and we’ve proved we can do that.
"We’ve scored threes, fours, five against Bolton and then we’ve had two or three 1-0 wins, so we’re showing that we’re resilient in defence and if games are tight we’ve got enough to score and got enough to see the game out as well.”