FEBRUARY felt like the longest month I've ever been involved in in football.

It was a decent month points-wise, especially as we had a lot of away games.

The only real blip was losing at Bristol City and that was mainly down to tired legs.

And you can't really argue with just two defeats in a month like that, especially as one of those was in the FA Cup.

Some of the performances might not have been what everyone wanted but at the end of the day we put the points on the board.

We finished the month in a good position in the league - two points ahead of third-placed Forest, with a game in hand.

It's up to us to make that game in hand count.

But it won't be easy as it's reached that stage of the season when everyone gets a bit edgy.

That's why we all need to be pulling in the same direction.

You can understand people getting frustrated because we're expected to be up there.

And when things aren't going well there is no-one more frustrated than the players.

It rests on the players shoulders to put it right in the next game and we've done that pretty well this season after the few poor performances we've had.

The last time we got promoted from this division we did have a few tense affairs towards the end of the season at home and, like then, it's important everyone gets behind each other.

We've got seven home games left and every one of them is going to be a nervous affair.

There will be teams coming here scrapping for their lives and trying to stifle us.

It's important we have everyone working in the same direction because all the players want to be playing in the Premier League next season - and all the fans want to be watching Premier League football.

If we can have a month like February this month we'll give ourselves a good chance of being in the automatic promotion places.

All we can do is go out and play our own games and if results like Forest's defeat on Saturday happen it's just an added bonus.

But you can't expect other teams to slip up and hand you things.

You've got to go and do it yourself.

Coming from behind at Cardiff showed the character we've got in the squad to dig in and get a draw in what was a tough game when we had several players missing.

Hopefully we're getting players fit at the right time now going into the final stretch.

It showed what strength in depth we could have with the likes of Mozza and Coxy coming on to make an impact in the Derby game.

And it's a real bonus to have added Ben Watson to our squad.

He's a proven Coca-Cola Championship player.

We saw that on Saturday when he was tidy on the ball and strong in his challenges.

It's nice to have that little bit of extra quality going into the run-in.

He seems like a decent lad as well.

He hasn't had to go through the signing initiation yet but fellow loan signing Frank Nouble has when we travelled to Cardiff, and he was pretty good to be fair.

He gave us a good rendition of Lionel Richie's 'Easy'.

But Gonzo's still been the best this season.

I'm sure he doesn't feel too much like singing at the moment after his season was ended by the broken metatarsal he suffered at Reading in the cup.

He's been a big player for us this season and his versatility was a huge help to us.

It's disappointing for Gonzo and we're just going to have to dig in and get on with it.

It's important for us to make sure he comes back next season as a Premier League player.

That's the feeling from everyone in the dressing room.

As soon as Gonzo came through the door, everyone liked him because he's a bubbly character.

The situation is sort of like with Filipe Teixeira two seasons ago when he got injured in the Championship and then we won promotion for him.

Hopefully we can do that for Gonzo.