Still Positive Despite Dip

Stephen Clemence has said that he is disappointed that Blues have dropped to fourth, but that we aren’t out of the races by any stretch of the imagination.

Speaking to the local press, Clemence pointed out that Blues weren’t out of the Championship race for automatic promotion and reminded people not to judge or change their opinion because we still have games in hand.

‘I am very disappointed for us to be down in fourth.

‘I would just say let everybody judge us when we’ve had those two games in hand. I think we are capable of winning them both.

‘And, we have still got to play all the teams around us. As long as we keep picking up points along the way, it looks like those games are going to be vital now.

‘To be fair, it’s been very hard for the lads. Players talk about match fitness. We have had a whole of January and had two league games. That’s nothing. Saturday was my first game since the first of January.

‘It’s nice now to get going. With the games coming every week, the lads will get sharper.

‘I am sure you will see us getting better and better.

‘You could see in the last half-hour on Saturday when we had Gary McSheffrey, Cameron Jerome and Nicklas Bendtner was on.

‘It was like that spell when we were scoring three and four goals every week.

‘On paper, it looks not a bad result. But when you analyse the performance, I was disappointed because I felt we should have won.

‘First half, although we were up against it at times and had to soak up some pressure, they didn’t really look like scoring.

‘The back four were superb. There was a great spirit about us after the Southend United result.

‘Second half we went a goal down and it kick-started us, it was as if we went ‘right, let’s show what we can do’.

‘It shouldn’t take something like that to really get us going, but it did. We got a goal back quick and I felt there was only going to be one winner in the end.’