IT HAS been a fantastic week for City with two wins on the road at Shrewsbury and Peterborough.

Firstly, on Saturday came a 3-2 win at Shrewsbury and this was followed up with an even more impressive 2-1 win at play-off hopefuls Peterborough United on Tuesday night. It’s now three wins on the bounce for the Reds and these results have helped ease any fears of a second successive relegation. With just 10 games of the season remaining, City probably only need another nine points to ensure survival, which they should now do comfortably.

Tuesday night’s win at Peterborough was all the more impressive as after going 2-0 up early on we were then reduced to 10 men with El-Abd needlessly getting sent off for an off the ball elbow after just 20 minutes.

The home side got a goal back just before the half-time break and City had to weather an almighty storm in the second half as the home side attacked at will. But, in an all too rare occurrence this season, the defence held strong and Fielding was excellent in the City goal.

The fighting spirit in the last few games has been great to see and I can’t help but think it has at least something to do with the team talk the players received from terminally-ill supporter Mark Saunders before the Gillingham game a couple of weeks back. The players were clearly moved and inspired by his words that urged the players to “fight” and “play as a team” which they are now certainly doing.

I’m sure there will be a lot of tired legs for this Saturday’s home game against local rivals Swindon Town (3pm) but here’s hoping we can maintain this mini-run of good form. Swindon themselves are not in good form having not won in six games.

They are however still in ninth place in League One with an outside chance of making the play-offs. Amazingly, City could actually close the gap between themselves and Swindon to just three points should they win Saturday. A realistic target now should be to try and finish above our west country rivals.