For us Ipswich fans, this is likely to be the most tense and nail-biting finish to a season we have endured for some time. Mid-table mediocrity has been about as good as it's got for this team since the play-off chasing season of 2007/08, falling just a point shy of sixth place.

Marcus Evans had bought the club towards the end of 2007, there was a sense of excitement and expectation in the air amongst the fans. Our away form cost us a chance of promotion that season but we felt this could be the dawn of a new era for Ipswich Town. We had money to spend, a manager in Jim Magilton who got us playing attractive football, surely it was only a matter of time before we were once again strutting our stuff with the best in the land?

Five years on and we find ourselves with 12 games left in the season, every match feeling like a cup final. Had you told me this back in December 2007, I would have thought at the very least we would be clinging onto Premiership survival.

My present self struggles to type that sentence without a little snigger before then holding my head in my hands. Sure, we do have something to play for, it's just a little different from how we all imagined it. In reality we find ourselves in 19th place in the Championship, just four points above the relegation zone, dreaming of our once bemoaned mid-table finish.

One dreads to think where we would now be had Paul Jewell remained in charge for longer than he did. After promising results and performances in our first two games (in particular at Watford), a 6-0 thumping away at Blackpool bought us crashing back down to earth. One win in 13 games saw us sink to bottom of the championship with a measly seven points gained and a whopping -16 goal difference.

Mick McCarthy has since steadied the ship and left us all wishing the league had started on the 3rd November. DJ Campbell's goal scoring efforts combined with a more solid looking defence saw an improvement in results and league position.

Since Campbell's departure we have unfortunately seen teams around us gather a bit of momentum and have been dragged right back into the thick of it. Barnsley are top of the form table, putting together an impressive run before this weekend's defeat to fellow strugglers Bristol City.

Peterborough have managed to drag themselves back into contention, before Christmas they had practically been written into the League One fixture list for the 2013/14 season. They now find themselves four points from safety with games in hand on a lot of the teams around them and aren't shy of a goal or two.

Sheffield Wednesday have also hit 'play-off' form accruing 12 points in their last six games. Ipswich face both the latter teams in their run-in, both away from home. These will obviously be two hugely important games in the battle for survival. Peterborough may have the worst home record in the league, but our recent record at London Road doesn't give you much encouragement.

Luckily for us, Wolves and Huddersfield have gone into self-destruct mode recently and have been welcomed with open arms to the relegation battle. Looking at our remaining fixtures, it's hard to pick out any game where you would be overly confident of an Ipswich win.

Saturday's game against Huddersfield was one where you thought we had a good chance of doing just this. Huddersfield coming into the game on the back of a 6-1 battering away at Forest and one win in their last 16 league games. It was a rare occasion where we had come up against a team who were worse than us at keeping the ball out of their net and just as bad when it came to putting it in the opposition's.

The game itself was about as pretty as the pitch it was played on, with Town managing just one shot on goal. One positive however is certainly the fact that we kept another clean sheet, totalling three in our last five games, mainly thanks to a string of good saves from Henderson in the second half.

Whether this is a point gained or two points dropped, only time will tell. Stay up by at point at the end of the season and it will look like a fantastic result. However, should the unthinkable happen and Ipswich are, well you know (I’m not even going to mention the R word), we maybe left ruing a missed opportunity to obtain three golden points.

The Championship, as we all know, is a funny old league. On any given day, anyone can beat anyone and form guides are all too often thrown out the window. There's plenty of football left to be played and plenty of results that will leave you scratching your head wondering just how that happened. On paper our run-in looks tough, with our next games coming against promotion-chasing Nottingham Forest and Leicester, we could conceivably be in the relegation zone come our all all important trip to London Road.

It's looking likely that a team is going to go down with a records point haul this season. The magical 50 points probably won't be enough, so to be safe I feel we need another 15 points. Although hard to find a clear Ipswich win in the remaining fixtures, there are certainly some winnable games in there.

Five games I would put in this category are the home fixtures against Bolton, Leeds and Birmingham, on top of that I would include the obvious 'relegation six-pointers' away at Peterborough and Sheffield Wednesday.

It's not going to be easy, I think we are all aware of the challenge this club faces in staying up. The football will probably be about as pretty as Guirane N'Daw's first touch, as dramatic as a Lee Martin dive and consistent as JET.

Mick has done well to even get us in the position we are given the mess left behind by Jewell and would have earned every penny of that million pound bonus should he keep us up. Do just that and we can look to rebuild in the summer (yes, I know we've heard this all too many times now) and hopefully push towards a new, more optimistic future for this great club of ours.

Fail this and it's Shrewsbury away on a wet and windy Tuesday night. So prepare to bite those fingernails like they've never been bitten before (for some this may actually be the case), dig out those lucky pants and rekindle those pre-match rituals that once guaranteed a Town win because we have officially entered 'squeaky bum time'.

martleshamitfc added 22:38 - Feb 27 Looks bleak as I sip my red wine and giggle to myself insanely!! It all tells me how lucky I was to be grow up watching Ipswich in the 70's and 80's. Never ever did i think that my beloved team would ever be in this position back then!
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DiamondGezzer added 07:42 - Feb 28 Martlesham, I make you right !
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itfcbishop added 12:08 - Feb 28 I fell really unlucky being 17 and not really seen any good football at PR. I only properly went to football after the west ham play offs and since then just been watching the club fall. I am going to stick by the team no matter what and times like this are very worrying.
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Pessimistic added 12:42 - Feb 28 Nice blog and I, like all Town fans are very concerned. To be honest those winnable games you speak of are sadly very losable too and this is the cause of most concern.
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sarahjean1 added 17:29 - Mar 5 You can change your old woman(3 times married) but you can't change your team,it's till death do us part Bill cunningham
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