Since we got on the first page of Ceefax in terms if the Championship table it has been like playing at altitude.

I’m one of those people who is quite frightened to talk Preston now because we keep winning don’t we!

The game against QPR last week was a big result. The fact that we went one down and still came back to win.

I think it was excellent, Billy changed it at half-time and what he did obviously worked. Nugent scored his first goal and that is going to be good news as well.

The other thing as well is that we are showing really good character, when you are playing well and you are in a good run of form, where as in the past at one down we have probably gone and lost two or three nil, now we haven’t seen it as a big problem and we say ‘we are one down let’s keep going and try and turn it around’. We have a mental strength more than anything to turn it around so that is a good thing and I would have thought in the minds of the players at the moment it doesn’t matter who we play against.

The players will already be full of confidence, it is impossible not to be full of confidence when you keep winning. From that point of view Billy is probably going to say that we have got into the play-off position, we have got to keep going. We have done the easy bit which is get ourselves in there, now it is so so important just to stay in there by hook or by crook.

We know how open the league is and we know that all the teams in the top ten are going to have to play each other between now and the end of the season so they are gong to be taking points off each other. It is just important for us if we can maintain our home form and keep picking points up away from home, that should, in theory, be enough to keep us in there.

It was good to see Chris Lucketti grab the winner again last weekend. You can never score enough goals from different areas. You look at every successful team, take the best team in the Premiership, John Terry must have six to eight goals this season. It just needs a contribution from so many different people, yes of course you want the strikers to score but if your midfielders are chipping in and your defenders are chipping in, what it does in the end is it turns draws into wins and you have three points rather than one which is why, on this good run, we are where we are.

Young Nugent got his first goal for the club at Loftus Road and I am keeping a close eye on him. At the moment it is all brand new, it is a different division, it is a different club, what we have seen so far we have liked. It is just important he continues that progression. Actually coming on and changing a game is easier than starting because it is a completely different mindset when you have to start. He has shown he can do it and if he keeps knocking at the door like that then they are going to start him sooner or later.

Ipswich Town are the opposition and I have tremendous amount of respect for their boss Joe Royle. I think every time he has had a team in this division they have got promoted. I honestly believe that he is the best manager for this division that there is, I’m not being disrespectful he has obviously been a good manager in the Premier League with Everton. What I’m saying is that when he gets jobs at this level he finds strikers, he plays a really good way, his teams always score goals, they play attacking football and I think that his team are easily the best team in this league, easily, and that includes Wigan and Sunderland, I think Joe’s team are the best.

This is the acid test for us, if we can get a result against Ipswich, the best team in the league, that would just rubber stamp it and from there we are asking why can’t North End get promotion from the play-offs?

You would hope that tonight’s match would be a good one but our record on Sky is not great. I know that we beat Cardiff away but we bombed against Sheffield United, I feel that us playing at home we owe the audience one don’t we. The thing is we don’t have to change, just because we are playing against the top team, we just have to keep playing the way we have played over the last nine games.

The people of Preston will be getting excited about the league position and we just need to continue what we are doing. We are a long way away from the automatic spots, not just in terms of the points but also in terms of the number of games you would have to win just to get there and that’s assuming that teams like Ipswich, Wigan and Sunderland are going to lose. We don’t really want to be noticed do we? We just want to keep playing, keep getting the points, let everyone talk about Ipswich, Wigan and Sunderland and we will just keep along nicely thank-you very much.

It was good to see the North End fans travelling down to Loftus Road in their numbers and I think we will get a really good gate on Friday night because it is the best team in the league and we are playing really well.

It’s the classic thing, if you are winning and you are playing good football and scoring goals then the crowds will come because that is what they want, they want to support a winning team and they want to be entertained and if they don’t then there is something wrong.