Life is a Roller Coaster

It's easy on the back of a defeat to go into negative mode. It's much easier when that defeat is against a side that you have already met twice and put five goals past them on both occasions.

However, the performance yesterday at Fulham along with some recent ones show that we are far from certain of achieving our goal of automatic promotion.

We scraped a draw at Rotherham who like Fulham are struggling at the wrong end of the table. We edged a home win against Sheffield Wednesday after twice coming from behind.

On Tuesday night we started well and won the match with Charlton in the opening twenty minutes. However, the second half performance was very ordinary and we are beginning to show signs that we could face a real fight for a top two places rather than stroll our way to promotion.

It's fortunate that both Middlesbrough and Bournemouth have taken their feet off the gas too. It appears that no one seems to have that little bit extra in the tank to pull away from the pack.

One side who certainly look like they could emerge from the chasing group are Norwich City. They are hitting form at the right time and we are still to visit Carrow Road.

We have some very important and tough fixtures left in the promotion chase run-in. Middlesbrough are amongst the visitors over the next few weeks along with Watford. Both are still very much alive in the title race.

For us to succeed, we need to up a gear and return to the form that has seen us smash some teams.

Yesterday was very poor. We simply didn't show up! Our defence was a shambles!

We now face a trip to Brighton on Tuesday night with the possibility of being without a recognised striker. Chris Martin is a doubt and Darren Bent limped off at Craven Cottage. If this is the case a true test of character awaits our team.

Now is the time to gain some momentum and push on. There's some very tricky hurdles to overcome in the next few weeks.

The very least we can expect is a place in the play offs, however most fans would now see that as failure.

I hope that we can avoid the end of season lottery as they look like being a very tough ask this year. There is often a team that makes a late run into them. Our Red neighbours are doing their best to make sure that it us them.

So on to the task in hand and a trip to the South coast. Three points is now a must and we need to put these indifferent performances behind us.