Town boss Paul Jewell says he will use the two-week international break to work on the fitness of his three new signings and a couple of the players who joined the squad earlier in the summer. Talismanic midfielder Jimmy Bullard in particular is off the pace having been away from former club Hull for a month before joining the Blues on Thursday.
Speaking after Saturday’s 2-1 victory over Leeds, Jewell said: "It’s a two-week break now and tonight is the time to enjoy the victory.
"I thought Daryl Murphy and Ibrahima Sonko came in and considering they haven’t played for a while did terrifically well, although Sonko was out on his feet for the last 15 minutes.
"However, we got the victory. We needed something. We had a bit of fortune and today was our day.”
The Blues boss says new fitness coach Andy Liddell will be a busy man over the next fortnight: "We need to get some fitness work into Jimmy and into Sonko and probably Daryl Murphy, and also one or two others.
"We got Jay Emmanuel-Thomas late. I wish we could have had him in pre-season because he’s not fit.
"We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re not going to sit back in these two weeks. We’ve got a lot of work to do on the training pitch, fitness-wise.
"And if we can get some more players in before the window closes [on Wednesday] or even after that on loan, that’s what we’ll try and do. We’re not sat here thinking everything is hunky dory, we need to improve.”
Sonko won plenty of plaudits for his debut and Jewell says Town’s first ever Senegalese player has a presence about him: "With no disrespect to what we’ve had, when you’re stood in the tunnel and you look at Sonko, and you look again, you see him and the size of him, he’s an imposing figure.
"Too many times this season we’ve been a bit weak at the back. He’s not Beckenbauer, but he puts his body on the line, he heads it and kicks it and he’s played at the top level. And that’s what we need — someone who’s going to defend for their life.
"We were disappointed with their goal and a couple of times they could have got in. I know he will get better.”
The Town manager said Bullard made an impression despite his lack of fitness: "He’s had two freekicks and if anyone else had hit those freekicks the whole ground would have been booing. But because it was the prodigal son there wasn’t any!
"But that’s the effect he has. He’s infectious and he wants to get on the ball. He’s not fit, I think everyone can see that, but he definitely has an impact on the place, the crowd and the players, and we’re delighted to have him.
"Mark Kennedy did very well [when moved to the left side] and we only brought him off because we were trying to get Daryl going down that left-hand side, and today it worked out for us.”
Jewell, who admitted he considered a switch back to a three-man central midfield for Saturday's match before opting to stick with 4-4-2, warns fans that it might take some time for his side to start playing attractive football: "At half-time I said to the players they’ve got to go up against their man, Leeds were winning every battle all over the park in the first half.
"It’s not going to be pretty here for a while. I think anyone who understands football knows that when things are evolving you’ve sometimes got to take steps back to go forwards.
"We don’t want to take too many fives and sevens but I think there are certain things that we’re going to have to persevere with. It might have to be ugly, we might have to put in battling performances.
"I hear a lot about certain clubs’ ways, but it’s all about winning games. If we have to build things slowly by being ugly to get to the better football we want to play, that’s what we will have to do. That’s what successful clubs do.”
The Liverpudlian admits that the result was by far the most important thing on Saturday: "We know it’s not going to cloud everywhere where we need to be better but for the players and certainly the staff and manager, and supporters, it’s a huge fillip and pick-me-up. However we got it with the situation we’ve been in, we’ll take it.
"We were on the floor today going in there and we’ve come away with three points. It doesn’t say in the paper that we were lucky, it just says we’ve taken the points. And if it does say in the paper that we were lucky, we don’t care!”