Blues boss Kieran McKenna says the current situation at the top of the Championship looks set to make for an exciting end to the season.

Town are currently fourth in the division, three points behind Millwall in third, four off Middlesbrough in second and 12 away from leaders Coventry City with the Blues having 10 games to play and the three above them and Hull City, two points below them in fifth, just nine.

As it stands, it looks like three sides are fighting it out for second, although the Tigers would argue four, with the Sky Blues having taken themselves away from the pack after winning their last five following a shaky couple of months.

“It’s going to make for an exciting end to the season,” McKenna said. “It’s pretty tight in quite a few positions in terms of the points.

“I think that’s quite often the case in the Championship, I don’t know about every season, but quite often it is like that, and it’s been competitive all season.

“I think there’s a great chance it’ll be competitive right to the end of the season. So we want to be in that mix, we want to be there competing for our goals.

“We are there at the moment. And to do that, we have to keep on winning games and picking up points.

“We’ve got the next chance to do that on Saturday and then one more game before international duty [at home to Millwall] and then we’ll see where we’re at.”

Boro suffered a surprise 1-0 home defeat to Charlton last night, on-loan Town right-back Harry Clarke providing the assist, and McKenna expects there to be more ups and downs before the final day.

“There tends to be but in general there is all season,” he reflected. “But once you get to that last bit, there tends to be even more so at times because teams have different goals, different motivations. Even the teams that maybe aren’t going for a promotion or trying to avoid relegation can loosen up a little bit and have a swing at it.

“So there are no easy games in the division. There’s certainly no easy games at this stage of the season, that’s why you can only focus on yourself.

“And we’ve got one on Saturday that we need to give full respect and attention to. And we’re going to have to fight hard to win.

“We know that there are going to be ups and downs. We’ve had two sort of really mixed games in the last few days and a big blow at the end of both. But also, you can look at things really differently and say we’re five games unbeaten, three wins and then two draws that should have been wins. It could look or feel really different.

“You have to handle all those ups and downs and just stay focused on the task at hand and block everything else out. And that’s what we’ve tried to do over the last few days. And that’s what we’ll try to do going into Saturday.”

Asked about the pressure growing on the teams at the top as the season goes into its final games and whether the Blues probably still having more players who have been through those situations in the past might be a factor, McKenna said: “I think our squad’s really different, if we’re honest, so there isn’t a huge proportion of the group that has been here for those experiences.

“I think I said after the game the other night, the group’s going through a lot of new things together.

“There are a few players here who can relate to some of what we went through the other night. If I give, for example, the conceding of a late goal that feels like a big, big blow.

“There are some players who have been through that here at this club and there are other players who have been through similar scenarios at other clubs, but I don’t think it’s something that we’re going to lean into too much.

“It’s a new group of players. Off course, as a staff and people around the building, we’d like to think we have some good experiences of things that have worked well previously, but it’s about the here and now.

“And this is a group that is fighting for something really special, a lot of them fighting for it for the first time at the club, we’re fighting for something that has had happened once in the last 25 years in terms of trying to get to the Premier League.

“So, I think it’s a really good thing to fight for and you can talk about pressure, but it’s the type of pressure that you want.

“You work all season and fight to get to the last 10 games to be in the mix for your goals. And we are. We know there’s a lot to do and it’s going to be tough.

“But it’s exactly at the right end of the table that we want to be, competing for what we want, so, we have to go for it with everything.

“And we have to remember to try and enjoy it as well because there’s going to be an exciting, end to the season and we’re fighting for what we want to be fighting for.”

Photo: TWTD