Town manager Roy Keane says he’s happy enough with his side’s haul of four points from their first two league games. The Blues beat Middlesbrough away last weekend, before drawing 1-1 at home to Burnley on Saturday.
Keane said: "You always take it one game at a time, but if you’d asked me last Saturday morning when I woke up in the hotel room in Durham eating my cereal in bed, I would have said that four points wouldn’t be the end of the world for us because they were two tough games.”
The Blues boss was delighted with his side’s performance against the Clarets, despite conceding Clarke Carlisle’s header from a corner in injury time: "Our team at the end looked unbelievably small but they had massive hearts. If ever we were going to concede it was going to be from a set piece because they’ve got some big, big lads. You find that when teams come out of the Premiership.
"I’m absolutely delighted and I’m looking forward to one or two days off, as probably are the players. David Norris was a brilliant captain, Márton made one of the best saves I’ve seen in a long time in the first half.
"Young Shane O’Connor did very well against some good players, Jaime did well. I thought the two centre-halves were outstanding. Steady did well. Trust me, I couldn’t be happier.
"We could have kept it a bit more,” Keane continued, "but that’s me nit-picking. We were caught out a little bit by our inexperience bombing forward, particularly Jaime and Shane, and Ross Wallace pulled away from us a few times. We calmed down a little bit in the second half and were a bit more solid.
"A lot of our players had played 120 minutes on Tuesday night, we travelled back carrying injuries, were missing important players and we get a performance like that. Give me that all day.
"There’s no guarantee you’re going to win football matches but you ask your players before the game to give 100% for the club and they did that, full stop.”
Keane had especial praise for his goals-aplenty new skipper’s display: "Chuck does that every week. On Tuesday he was supposed to have 45 minutes and ended up having 120 because we had a player pull out. He scored two goals then, scored on Saturday. Not a bad week for Chuck.”
The Town manager would have preferred to have rested a few players but due to the ongoing injury situation — Grant Leadbitter is set to go a scan on a suspected chipped ankle bone today — was unable to do so: "I think even Luke Hyam looked tired, just lacking that bit of sharpness.
"You can’t expect these young players to play 46 games in the Championship. We could do that but these boys will be crippled when they’re 24 or 25 like a lot of other players have been. You’ve got to get the balance right.
"We’ve got to be careful with them, but I didn’t have a choice on Saturday. If I’d have had options, people like Luke wouldn’t have been involved. I need to rest the boy. We had the same situation with Connor Wickham last season, everyone said we’d got to play him. He’s a young boy, he’s still growing.
"I have to look at the bigger picture,” said Keane. "It might cost us results sometimes, but we want these boys to be playing for the next 10 or 15 years, not two or three and having knee operations, hip operations and taking pain killers.”
The Irishman, who celebrated his 39th birthday earlier in the week, has given his squad a well-earned rest: "These boys put their bodies on the line and I’ve given them a few days off to go off and chill out and enjoy themselves. They deserve it. They’ve got Sunday and Monday off, then they’ll be back in on Tuesday for another tough game next weekend. It’s been a decent week but we want to have another decent one next week.”
New loan signing Andros Townsend made his debut and his performance pleased his manager, even though he would have preferred to have used him as a sub: "I thought he did very well, but in an ideal situation I wouldn’t have started him. But we had to do the same last year. Chuck Norris was out for four months, he was only back training for a week or two and he was playing for us.
"The young boy did very, very well. Clearly he’s got qualities, he’ll only get better. We took him off after 75 minutes, but in an ideal world he would probably have been on the bench with young Luke. But we had to start him. He’s had one training session with us really, as Friday was very light. He’ll be better for it.”
The Blues boss says his squad will be in better shape in a few weeks’ time once he has added his three new signings — Jason Scotland, Darren O’Dea and one more — a couple of current players have moved on, Townsend has settled into the squad and the likes of Connor Wickham, Damien Delaney, Carlos Edwards and Mark Kennedy have returned from injury.