Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna says the next few games will be 'a good indicator for where we're at'.
Saturday's 2-0 win at Fleetwood made it an impressive 27 points from a possible 39 since the Northern Irishman took charge, closing the gap on the League One play-off places to five points with 10 games to go.
The Blues - unbeaten in seven, with nine clean sheets in the last 13 - now play four of their next five games at Portman Road.
Tomorrow night it's 18th-place Lincoln City in front of what will be a bumper 24,000+ crowd (7.45pm), then comes successive matches against top-six rivals Portsmouth (h), Oxford United (a) and Plymouth (h), followed by the early April visit of Cambridge United.
“I know what’s normally expected for promotion places and play-off places and stuff like that, so we know where we’re at,” said McKenna, whose record now reads P13 W8 D3 L2 F17 A5.
“It’s not something we’ve spoken a lot with the players about. We did spend last week just reinforcing certain things about our performances and our points total that we’ve picked up over the recent run of games.
“We had an 11-game block, now we’ve got a 10-game block. We’ve ticked one off. We’ve got to keep performing well and we’ve got to try and win games."
Following back-to-back long trips to Lancashire to play on poor playing surfaces against Morecambe and Fleetwood, McKenna is now expecting different types of tests over the coming weeks.
“What we now have is a run of games against teams towards the top of the table, good footballing teams, starting with Lincoln on Tuesday night, who are not at the top of the table but are certainly a very good footballing team," he said, Town having lost just twice on Suffolk soil in the league this season.
“We’ve got quite a lot of home games and I think we’re going to see where we’re at, to be honest.
“It’s been a couple of weeks of long travel, playing on really difficult pitches against difficult playing styles to play against but now we’ve got a run of games at home against good teams, who are going to come and play their football as well and it’ll be a good indicator for where we’re at.”
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