'We always look': Why Blackpool keep an eye on the results of their relegation rivals

It comes after the gap to safety stretched to four points on Tuesday night following Blackpool’s defeat to Blackburn.

Despite getting back to winning ways last weekend, the Seasiders are still up against it in their fight against relegation after winning just one of their last 16 league games.

“We’ve got to get back to winning ways,” McCarthy admitted.

“Who knows? It looks really bad on Tuesday night when the other sides win and they pull away from us.

“All we can do is concentrate on the game against Reading on Saturday and if we win and we suddenly find out they’ve lost, we could be back to where we were prior to Tuesday night. That’s all you can do.

“We’ve got to keep pecking away and see what we can pick up.”

While McCarthy says no good will come from focusing on results elsewhere, that doesn’t stop him from keeping up-to-date with developments elsewhere.

“We always look at it because we want to know where we are in the league and what points we need,” he added.

“But at the end of it, we can only do what we can do. Even if we win like we did on Saturday, the others won so that didn’t affect it.

“It’s down to us, nobody else. If we win enough games, somebody else is going to have to lose enough games for us to stay in the league, but we can’t predict that.”