Manager Mick McCarthy says he would have taken the current position at this stage of the season if it had been offered to him, but believes the Blues should really be doing better. Town sit in ninth in the Championship, five points fewer than Reading in sixth and 10 behind fifth-placed Nottingham Forest.

“Yes, I probably would have done,” McCarthy admitted. “But that’s suggesting that I’m happy and content with where we are, which I’m not.

“Bearing in mind where we were last season and thinking that even with three or four games to go we could still have got relegated and we got 50-odd points.

“That seems bonkers now that. What have the bottom three got now? The third bottom [Charlton] have got 24. That was just crazy.

“So, I would have taken it. But having done as well as we’ve done I think we should have done better.

“We’ve had 12 draws and I looked at them today thinking we could have [had more points] but everyone will say that, every manager who looks at their results, the ones who are in the bottom three will be saying.

“Barnsley will be looking and thinking ‘If we’d have taken three at Ipswich, which we could have done’.

“And I’m looking at it and saying ‘If we could have taken three points at Wigan’, which we should have done and took something at QPR where we should have done, and at Birmingham. But we didn’t.”

He says that that’s not due to a lack of trying on his players’ part: “I’m really fortunate that I’ve got a really good squad of players, they work their socks off every week.

“Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we’re not as good as we should be but overall they’ve been fabulous, I think. From November last year it’s been a really remarkable turnaround.”

He admits that finishing any higher than sixth will now be a big ask: “There’s one spot for the rest of us chasing it. The top five spots are not for us, Leeds, Brighton, Blackburn, Huddersfield and Wigan or whoever else is chasing.

“We’re 10 points behind that and if anyone tells me we can get 11 points more than Nottingham Forest between now and the end of the season, have a word with them. I’d love to think we could.

“Sixth spot is still there, but this weekend’s going to be a watershed. We’re going to Leicester, I don’t know where Reading are playing [at home to Blackburn] but if we don’t get anything and they were to win, then they’re suddenly eight points in front of us and that would be a helluva test for us.

"But that’s what we’re chasing and we’ll keep chasing it as long as it’s mathematically possible.”

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