Town captain Dara O’Shea hailed the attitude of teammate Ben Johnson after his latest performance in the Blues’ victory over Norwich City in the East Anglian derby at Carrow Road.

Versatile wideman Johnson has found minutes hard to come by this season and started just one Championship match between the end of August and early March.

The former West Ham United defender even missed out on matchday squads on occasions this term, but has since started each of the last four matches after the door opened at left-back following a suspension to Leif Davis.

Despite the return of Davis, Johnson kept his place in the side against the Canaries and shifted to play on the right wing after scoring in Town’s victory over Birmingham City.

O’Shea believes Johnson’s mentality is the perfect example to other players on maintaining focus and drive to succeed when given the opportunity.

“He’s unbelievable, Ben, at what he does,” he said. “For someone who probably hasn’t played as many minutes as he’d have wanted this season, he’s been ever-present in training, always pushing and driving the standards and wanting to do well.

“He can easily sulk and not be happy and affect the group in a different way. It’s been a credit to him for how he’s been.

“Going from left-back to right wing, I don’t think many players do that so that says a lot about him as a person and a player, how good he is and how we can utilise him.”

Town’s historic victory, their first on Norfolk soil for more than 20 years, moved them back into the Championship’s automatic promotion places with games in hand still to play.

Millwall and Middlesbrough both dropped points over the weekend, with the Blues now requiring a maximum of 11 points from their remaining six matches to guarantee an immediate return to the Premier League.

O’Shea said: “You can get caught up looking at the league table, games this, games there. For us, we know we have games left to play and we’ve got to do our best in each game.

“If we win every game, we’ll get promoted and that’s the main thing. It’s focusing on ourselves, not looking elsewhere and what will be, will be.

“As long as we can put in performances that we and our fans are proud of and come out on the right side of the results, we’ll be happy come the end of the season.

“I think we’ve had that pressure all season. Maybe now that we’re at the top end of the table, there might be a bit more pressure and it’s the business end.

“We’ve had that pressure all season and it’s relishing that, it’s a great position to be in. We wanted to be in this position at the start of the season and we find ourselves here now, so it’s important to use that pressure in the right way, not get too carried away and understand that we can only control what we can control.

“That’s what we do from the whistle blows until the whistle ends. Day in, day out in training is massive for that and how we can continue growing as a group.”

The final stretch of the campaign continues with a midweek and weekend match all the way to the season finale in early May, which includes four games away from home.

Next up is Tuesday’s trip to relegation-threatened Portsmouth before Sunday’s return to Portman Road for a pivotal clash against fellow promotion-chasers Boro.

“It’s going to be intense, this league is,” O’Shea said. “We obviously have games to play as well that were postponed earlier on in the season, so we knew it was going to be tough. We knew the end of the season is going to be like this and it always is.

“To be a team that gets promoted, you’ve got to go and do stuff like that. That’s what we’ve been training for all year, we’ve got a great, competitive squad that we’re going to utilise. Everybody’s going to play a part come the end of the season and we’ve got to make the most of it.

“We’ve got an amazing squad and a really competitive group that push each other day in, day out. There’s two players for every position and that’s what you need to be a successful team.

“We push each other in training and we work hard. There’s still football left to be played and everyone’s there. We’re going to have to push each other and keep leading each other and go in the right direction which I feel like we are.”

Photo: Action Images via Reuters