Birmingham City defender Jonathan Spector wants his teammates to give it all they have got to finish in the play-off places.
The Blues have not been outside of the top 10 in the Championship all season, but are currently 11 points off the play-off places and have seven games remaining to catch the leading pack.
And although Birmingham have a game in hand over the four teams immediately above them, Spector understands their promotion hopes are out of their hands.
“We have to rely on other results now in order to make the play-offs but that said it doesn’t matter, we want to finish as strongly as possible,” Spector told the Birmingham Mail.
“If that’s in the play-offs, fantastic, if not – that’s out of our hands now unfortunately.
“What we can control is playing as well as we can and putting everything we have into these next few games and finish strongly.
“It’s about professional pride in doing the job properly. We have worked so hard up until this point.
“And we are still working hard, we are just not getting the results at this moment, which is disappointing and frustrating. We don’t want the past eight months to be for nothing.”
The United States international was left to rue the fact that they didn’t make the most of their 2-1 home defeat to Brighton and Hove Albion – conceding twice from set pieces – insisting his fellow defenders need to stay focused throughout the match.
“They didn’t cut us open from open play, I thought we played quite well and stuck to our game-plan it was just the set plays that were our undoing.” the 30-year-old added.
“It’s very uncharacteristic. I am not sure what to put it down to other than being a bit more focused.
“That’s all it is, set-plays are just pure focus and determination. Maybe we just didn’t quite have that against Brighton.”
The Blues have won none of their last five league matches, last winning a match at home to promotion-chasing Hull City at the beginning of March.
