Saturday’s trip to Hull City may not have as much riding on it as Nottingham Forest had hoped, but boss Steve Cooper has stressed it is no less important.
And he has challenged his players to secure a third-placed finish in the Championship. That would represent their highest finish in the second tier since 2010.
And a win would take them to 82 points, making it the Reds’ highest points total since 1998, when they were promoted as champions with 94. It would also maintain the mentality Cooper has drummed into his side from the moment he arrived at the City Ground last September.
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“We really want to finish third in the league, because I think that’s the sign of a team which wins and has the right mentality. We want to take all of that into the play-offs,” he said.
“At one stage we were at the bottom, so to be guaranteed fourth and to be able to finish third shows that we’re on the right track. It’s important, because it means we’ve gone to the very end.
“There are a lot of qualities - certainly psychological qualities - we’ve had to show to go on that journey from bottom to third or fourth. We were fighting for second until the end of the last game. While third is still there, we want to fight for third.
“If we get there, it means we go into the play-offs in great shape. We go into the play-offs in great shape anyway, but we want to try to get another win.”
Cooper has said he is likely to make changes to the side which started at Bournemouth on Tuesday night, when defeat ended Forest’s hopes of automatic promotion. But whoever plays, he is eager to see his side bounce back ahead of their play-offs campaign.
"The teams that succeed are best defined by how they recover from setbacks,” he added. “Any team that wants to succeed, you have bumps in the road along the way and set-backs, so we embrace it. We have shown this year how good a team we are, so I want the players, the supporters and all the staff to feel really positive about how good our form is, how strong the confidence is and how much we love being at this football club.”
