IPSWICH Town defender David Wright has spoken out in support of Birmingham's Martin Taylor who accidentally broke Eduardo Da Silva's leg last weekend.Wright and Taylor are old friends from their time in the north-west together and have played against each other a few times and the Blues player is convinced no malice was intended against the Arsenal forward.

Derek Davis

IPSWICH Town defender David Wright has spoken out in support of Birmingham's Martin Taylor who accidentally broke Eduardo Da Silva's leg last weekend.

Wright and Taylor are old friends from their time in the north-west together and have played against each other a few times and the Blues player is convinced no malice was intended against the Arsenal forward.

Wright said: “From all the years I've known Martin I've never seen him try and hurt someone on purpose.

“I think if you know your football you could see it was just a late challenge. He just skipped out the way and it was very unfortunate that his leg was planted and Tiny just mistimed it and we all know what happened next.

“It just shows in a split second things can change for the worse. I know Martin Taylor from when we were kids.

“We came across each other quite a lot and he has not got a bad bone in his body. It was just one of those things. A lot of people have seen it and it does look horrendous. Hopefully Eduardo will recover as quickly as he can.”

Wright would like the opportunity to put some tackles in of his own after being left out for the past three games but is experienced enough to bide his time and knows what it takes to get back into the team.

He said: “It was really disappointing but that's a side of football you have to cope with sometimes. You don't like it when you get dropped but it's the gaffer's decision and even though I don't like it I've got to respect it.

“Brucey has done a good job but I've got to keep my head down and do the right things. Hopefully sooner rather than late I'll be back in.”

With six games coming up in March, starting with Southampton on Saturday, Wright is desperate to be involved in what he believes will be a crunch month.

“This will be a huge month. There are six games and that will really determine who is going to be the top two and the chasing pack for the next four spots.

“We need to make sure that we're there or thereabouts either sniffing the top two or be right at the centre of that play-off pack.

“We're very confident in picking every single point up. We believe we can go on a really good run.

“That's what we need to do. We're in that chasing pack and we need to stay there.

“We can now push on and we can hopefully have a real good crack at it.”

Wright is not one for table-watching, although he probably realises Town are seventh and need to get on a winning run if they are to have any chance of making the top two.

He said; “When I was at Crewe I was younger and we were fighting against relegation and I used to table watch all the time.

“As I got a bit older I realised it doesn't matter what anyone else is doing. When I was at Wigan I never even looked at the table because it really doesn't matter what anyone else is doing.

“As long as you're winning games picking points up then that's all you can do. We cannot affect any other club we can only affect the way that we're performing.

“You've got to keep going. I think Crystal Palace is a great example - they were second or third from bottom then they went on a 15-game unbeaten run and they were in the play-offs.

“If we go on a great run now for the next 12 games anything is possible.”