With Coventry City rooted firmly at the base of the Championship league table, few would have predicted they would get through the busy Christmas schedule with 6 points out of a possible nine, but despite this they remain seven points adrift of the safety zone.
The two wins and the manner of their one defeat have boosted the confidence of the Sky Blues and they go into Saturday's FA Cup game at home to Southampton eager to continue in their recent good run.
The Saints have lost their last two games, 1-0 to lowly Bristol City and 3-0 to south coast rivals Brighton, so Saturday's encounter promises to be interesting, but is the FA Cup a hindrance rather than a distraction to Championship survival?
Speaking to the CT, Coventry defender Richard Wood said, “You can look at it both ways. We can take a lot of confidence and encouragement from our results and performances over Christmas and we’ve got to keep that going.
“We want a good win against Southampton and to get into the next round with a bit more confidence because if we can keep that as high as possible I am sure we will keep picking up points.
“We have got to just look forward to hopefully going on a good cup run and keeping some good form going.”
Wood's partner in City's central defence Martin Cranie agreed it would be nice to get into the next round, but would prefer to keep the momentum going with another league game rather than a cup game.
Cranie said, “We’ve got the FA Cup coming up next and it would be nice to get into the next round, but, personally, I would like to have another league game to keep the momentum going.
"Before Christmas if you had said we’d get six points out of nine over the three games I think most people would have taken that the way things have been going, but it would be nice to try to keep that momentum going and we have to make sure we do that by keeping the level of performance up.
“Everyone has got to keep their heads up and turn out another good performance against Saints and then carry that in to the Derby game the following week.”