...who's to say what encouragement and motivation the teams at the bottom might have found had we been part of a four-way fight?

Perhaps Dyche would have changed something, but he seemed out of ideas. He didn't seem willing to take a more attacking approach, O'Brien would presumably continued to not have a look-in while his coaching team made sure he had learned the "nuts and bolts" before he could be risked, and the players would quite possibly have got worse in terms of their belief and ability to score goals.

So that's a maybe :o)