WITH four games left to play in the regular season the boys in Blue now know they are the masters of their own destiny, writes Derek Davis.Ipswich Town boss Joe Royle has overseen a run of five wins in six matches and believes his player's ability to cope with all-comers will see them through to a top-six finish.

WITH four games left to play in the regular season the boys in Blue now know they are the masters of their own destiny, writes Derek Davis.

Ipswich Town boss Joe Royle has overseen a run of five wins in six matches and believes his player's ability to cope with all-comers will see them through to a top-six finish.

With Wigan winning on Tuesday Town slipped to fourth and if Millwall win their game in hand by more than two goals the Lions would also move above them. That would still leave Ipswich in fifth place with a game at sixth-placed Sheffield United to come in a fortnight.

Royle said: “For the first time in a while it is in our own hands.

“After we lost at home to Millwall, our third defeat in a row, there were big doubts in some quarters, but the players have picked themselves up and have gone again.

“We have won at awkward places like Walsall and Rotherham, which have never been easy places to go for Ipswich.

“The one criticism I have had of us is we had not beaten top teams like Wigan and Norwich, who doubled us, but now we have beaten Sunderland so it was good to break that hoodoo.”

Town will be looking for revenge against Gillingham at Priestfield on Saturday but with Andy Hessenthaler's team on the cusp of slipping into the relegation zone, Royle knows it will be another testing challenge to overcome.

He said: “We are not counting chickens or anything like that. The boys have had a couple of days' rest but now we start working towards Gillingham.

“That is another awkward place and we don't want to be slipping up there.

“We lost 4-3 here to Gillingham and I still don't know how, but we did. Now we don't want to be looking back at the end of the season and say being doubled by Gillingham deprived us of a play-off place.”

After Gillingham comes Nottingham Forest at home, a side revived under Joe Kinnear and boosted by the return of David Johnson.

But then comes Sheffeld United and what is genuinely termed a 'six-pointer'.

Cardiff at home on Sunday, May 9 with a 1pm kick-off is likely to be the crunch game though, with nothing decided until after that one.