Town skipper Sam Morsy is relishing the prospect of games against League One’s current top two, leaders Plymouth Argyle and Wycombe Wanderers, in the space of the next four days.
The Blues are on a run of just one defeat in their last eight league games, which has seen them rise from the drop zone to tenth place and within four points of the play-off places, but their promotion credentials face the biggest possible test as they are set to take on five of the top six clubs.
First up are Plymouth Argyle at Home Park tomorrow, where they will face a team unbeaten in 14 games since the first day of the season when they were beaten at Rotherham. Eight wins and six draws have seen them bank 30 of the 42 points available to them.
But Morsy, 30, has not been surprised by the Devon outfit’s early-season exploits. He explained: "They may have surprised some people but I played against them in pre-season when I was with Middlesbrough and although we beat them I thought they looked a really good side. They were a team I looked at and thought they would do well this season.
"I’m not saying the league table doesn’t matter but it is still very early in the season. Plymouth are on a great run and I have a lot of respect for their manager, Ryan Lowe, which goes back to his time as a player.
"They are a good team, no doubt about it, or they wouldn’t be top of the league. For us it’s a great challenge because they’ll be thinking they are at home and should be winning the game. We’ll have to surprise them.
"We’ve already had to climb from a lowly position to get to where we are now so we have to keep doing it if we are going to get close or even into the top six ourselves.
"We have ground to make up on our next five opponents and the only way it’s going to happen is if we can win games against them. If you look at our recent league form over the last six to eight league games it’s promotion form, isn’t it?
"We just have to keep going and believe in ourselves. We have a really talented squad with a manager who is very experienced and has won things at this level.
"The teams who are above us in the top few places are up there for a reason and that’s because they are consistently good teams. These are the games that players should want to play in and why we are all in football.”
Town’s latest success was a last-gasp win over lowly Fleetwood at Portman Road last Saturday, all three points being gained in the third minute of stoppage time when another of the summer transfer window signings, on-loan Bersant Celina, netted the first goal of his second stint with the club.
Wolverhampton-born Morsy added: "I thought it was a good team performance. We played really well and created a number of chances, and the only criticism was that we didn’t kill the game off.
"The first time they got into our penalty box in the second half they scored when we switched off at the back stick and we got punished for it.
"It was great to do it to be honest because slowly we have to change the narrative of our season.
"Obviously, I’ve only been here for six games but there was certainly a narrative of ‘We’re going to concede late’ and ‘We’re going to whatever’ so slowly we’re going to change that to ‘We’re going to score late’ and ‘When we need a goal we’ll score an equaliser or we’ll get a winner’. Slowly, week by week, you can see that’s starting to change.
"Games like the win over Fleetwood are the better wins. You go back to the Shrewsbury game a couple of weeks ago and we probably weren’t at our best. But we still managed to dig out a win and that’s what we are going to have to do this season.
"We’ll have performances like Portsmouth and Doncaster, which are fantastic because we’re scoring a lot of goals, but there are certainly going to be tight games where we have to believe and have the mindset that we are going to win. No matter how it’s going, we have to be able to find a way, whether we’re playing good, bad or indifferent, to win a game.
"The game at Cambridge, when we conceded a late goal to draw, actually felt like a loss. But the late goal against Fleetwood made it feel like a massive win.
"We’ve had a lot of away games of late and we’re handling it well. We’re doing well, but it’s another huge test this weekend at Plymouth.”
Could the next five games prove pivotal to the season? He said: "Obviously, the way we started the season put us at a huge disadvantage. There’s no doubt about it — for us to be successful this season we have to go on a really, really strong run.
"It’s going to be great to see where we’re at. We’ve been working really hard, both on and off the pitch, and this run of games is going to be a real test. But we want to climb the table and to do that we’re going to have to go to places and get wins.”