The Blues head to Anfield this weekend off the back of six consecutive league defeats, a run of form which has seen us slide down the table from fifth to ninth.

Securing European football for 2026/27 boils down to our final four matches this season and McFarlane knows significant progress must be made if we are to achieve that target.

‘The players know, I know, the staff know, everyone at the club knows that the recent performances have been nowhere near the expected standard, and we're going to do everything we can to improve that,’ said McFarlane at his press conference today.

‘We want to turn it around. We know the standards that this club has set, we aren't meeting them at this moment, and the only thing we can control is how we behave and act every single day, and how hard we work to turn that level of performance around.

‘There's a lot of foundations for this team to have success. We're not performing the way we should be in this moment, but I do think there are foundations there for this team to be successful.’

Having put in a positive display against Leeds United at Wembley to secure an FA Cup final berth, the Nottingham Forest defeat earlier this week was a setback that really disappointed McFarlane in its nature.

However, he has seen enough signs that the Blues squad are doing all they can to arrest our recent malaise.

‘We're on a really bad run at the moment. The Leeds performance was a glimmer that we thought we could build on, and we weren't able to do that.

‘But I do see these boys every day, every training session, every meeting in the gym, and they're in a good place to go and attack games. We just haven't been able to translate that, so hopefully we can improve that on Saturday.

‘We've got four games left. We need to attack every game and show our level like we have done at times this year, and put ourselves in the best position to achieve European football.’