THERE'S no such thing as a bad away point, Town boss Mick McCarthy has said on numerous occasions during his three years at the club.

“I wouldn’t have bothered getting on the bus, I’d have taken it if they’d said ‘Don’t bother, we’ll stay where we are’,” he has said after plenty of hard-fought away stalemates.

Home draws are a different matter, however. Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Wolves was Town’s fifth in their last six home league games, a figure already equalling the total for the whole of last season.

Looking back at those games, several of them were matches the Blues should have won. They had chances to win the 1-1 with Birmingham in September, then just over a week later against Bristol City, they went ahead before conceding two quick-fire preventable goals before levelling.

David McGoldrick missed a late opportunity in the 0-0 draw with Huddersfield, while both teams had chances in the similarly deadlocked Cardiff game.

Having got back to home winning ways via the 2-0 defeat of Bolton, Saturday saw a return to draw disappointment and another match from which Town should have claimed all three points.

After going ahead through Jonathan Douglas, the Blues were comfortably on top. They had chances to add to their lead but failed to take them, most notably when Brett Pitman headed wide when he will feel he should have done better.

Once again a series of defensive errors led to an opposition goal. McCarthy was unhappy that the corner kick which led to it came soon after the Blues had the ball deep in the Wolves half.

From there, the flag-kick probably shouldn’t have been allowed to reach the far post and Tommy Smith oughtn’t to have been beaten to the ball by Mike Williamson, who crossed for James Henry to score.

The firmly-back-in-form Daryl Murphy put the Blues back in front but again Town succumbed to a series of errors to hand Benik Afobe Wolves’ second equaliser.

Adam Le Fondre should have been closed down more quickly, while no one was near enough to Afobe as he headed home.

Conceding silly goals has been Town’s Achilles’ heel all season, both home and away, from the two gifted to Brentford late on in the 2-2 draw at Griffin Park on the opening day onwards.

Even during the five-goal rampage at Rotherham the Blues briefly let the Millers back into the game with their two goals to bring the scoreline back to 4-2.

It’s surprising that Town have shown this tendency to regularly concede bad goals with the relative success under McCarthy having been built on a solid and parsimonious backline.

Throughout the season McCarthy has remained loyal to his first-choice back four and keeper, believing that they’re his best quintet. However, you wonder when his patience might run out.

Waiting in the wings for their chance are the likes of Bartosz Bialkowski, Jonny Parr, Piotr Malarczyk and Josh Emmanuel.

When you look at the league table, the cost of failing to turn draws into wins, particularly at home where the Blues picked up 15 victories from 23 games last season, is all too evident. Just three more points and they’d be in the play-off places.

But Saturday’s game against Wolves wasn’t all bad news, in the first half Town played some of their best and most fluent passing football of the season.

In the period after Douglas’ goal they were well on top and had chances to seal the three points, which perhaps has been another bad habit this season – having gone ahead and taken charge they don’t then get that vital second goal.

Despite all the home draws it’s worth remembering that Town have only lost three league matches and are very much in the hunt for a play-off place.

Talking of hunts, or rather Hunts, Saturday sees the Blues visit Charlton in a live Sky game, scene of Noel Hunt’s dramatic last-gasp debut winner last season.

The Addicks are struggling at the wrong end of the table – although they won at sixth-placed Birmingham last week – and Town would appear to have a very decent chance of recording what would be a fourth successive win at the Valley.

But if not, I doubt Mick McCarthy would complain too much about a draw. After all, there’s no such thing a bad point away from home.