CHRIS Hughton has revealed his hope that Birmingham City's amazing drubbing of Millwall can act as the ideal springboard for a successful promotion push.

The 6-0 victory at the Den sent a message to the rest of the Championship that Blues are stirring.

After dallying with the Europa League and lagging behind their rivals, they are now firmly in contention.

In a week, Blues moved up from 14th place to ninth after beating Ipswich Town, then to the play-off zone - for the first time this season.

Atlhough Reading’s evening defeat of Watford meant that Blues were only sixth for a couple of hours after the thrashing of Millwall, the psychological affect was nonetheless great.

And a glance at the Championship table today shows that Blues are only 10 points off top spot, with a game in hand - all is still to play for.
“We hope so, that this can really kickstart us for the second part of the season,” said Hughton.

“To get that amount of goals and to win like we didn, it was a good feeling and it will have given this group a big boost.

“It has been tough for us because we’ve always been behind on games. At one stage we were four behind.

“Having played eight more than everybody else because of Europe it has been really hard to assess where we are because we have always been playing catch-up.

“We have been good at home. We’ve not always got all the results we have wanted, but we have been good at home.

“It’s a long time since we have been as good as we should have been away from home. So the fact that this was away was a big plus.

“It’s our third win away from home. We had two really good wins at Bristol City and Nottingham Forest but never really kicked on from there.