Alan Judge is the latest Town player to claim that anything less than promotion back to the Championship will see this season labelled a failure.
His fellow midfielder, Jon Nolan, said it a few weeks ago and Republic of Ireland international Judge is in full agreement that the Blues should be good enough to capture a top-two slot come May, or to at least go on and achieve their goal at Wembley via the play-offs.
But 31-year-old Judge knows the team’s current miserable run of 12 games without a win in all competitions, which includes eight in the league, must end as soon as possible — hopefully when Accrington Stanley visit for an historic first time tomorrow.
Judge said: "If you ask me where we’re going to be come the end of the season I’ll say promoted. Twelve games without a win is a long time but we truly believe that we can turn it around.
"We’re still fifth in the league, which is incredible, and it gives us a great chance to still finish top at the end of the season. That’s what we are aiming for, I would imagine, but I know I’m thinking that anyway.
"I’m not really sure about what has gone wrong, to be honest with you, because we’re not doing anything different. We’re still training the way we usually train. I think this sort of thing happens to a few teams — you blow teams away and people start looking at you to see what you’re best at.
"Maybe teams are figuring us out a little bit, so it’s up to us to try to be better and enforce what we want to do a lot better than before.”
Can Town arrest the dip in form and return to where they want to be in the table? Judge added: "Yes, definitely, but it’s all down to us. We have to make sure we get ourselves there.
"There were some better signs at Wycombe. It was a lot better but that’s just one game and we need to do it for a lot longer.”
Town’s home form has been poor all season — just three wins in 10 and 14 points from a possible 30 — and the Dubliner continued: "The fans come out in their thousands to see us at home and for a League One team we do really well.
"We’ve been getting almost 20,000 fans at games and they want to see us win. Ultimately, that’s what it is all about and we need to do that for them.
"It could be a bit edgy on Saturday but once they see 100 per cent effort, they see that we’re doing things right and we keep doing what we believe in, I think they’ll be happy with it.
"Obviously, everybody wants to win but as long as they see us working hard I think they’ll be happy as well.
"Players talk about everything and we understand from the fans’ side of things that they are a bit frustrated at the moment.
"But these things kind of happen in football. As I’ve said before, it’s a blip and it’s obviously lasted a bit longer than we would want it to be.
"But we’re a big team in this league and players coming to Portman Road enjoy the atmosphere because it is a Championship team — and the ground as well.
"Some teams sit back but I’m not so sure about Accrington. I’ve seen them play a few times and they do like to play. I like the way their manager, John Coleman, has his teams playing football.”
The 17th-placed Lancashire outfit are also in form right now with just one defeat in their last nine games in all competitions, seven in League One and two in the Leasing.com Trophy in which they retain an interest and face a quarter-final trip to Salford on Tuesday week.
Taking 14 points from a possible 21 has also lifted Stanley away from the foot of the table and they have actually netted 34 goals to Town’s 33 in league fixtures, although the clubs’ respective goal differences — plus 11 compared to plus one — are heavily in the Blues’ favour.