Town manager Paul Jewell says it will take time for his side to have the settled look that today’s opponents Blackpool have had throughout boss Ian Holloway’s time in charge. The Blues manager, who is set to give new loan signing Danny Collins his debut at centre-half today, admits that he’s still trying to find the right blend.
Jewell said: "We’re searching for the right formula and the right balance. That’s going to take time. Blackpool play 4-3-3, they play it very well and they’ve played that way for the last two and a half years since Ollie’s been there.
"We are searching a little bit. That’s one of the reasons we are looking around to try and get players who can come in.
"I’ve said on a lot of occasions that I’d like to play 4-4-2 but there are different ways of playing 4-4-2 and when you look back at last season, when we got results we were playing 4-3-3.
"I think sometimes you’d like to do certain things but your hands are tied by the personnel you’ve got or through injuries or suspensions. And we’ve got to be adaptable and flexible, it’s no good having everything set in stone.”
The Blues, playing 4-3-3 or 4-5-1 as it is often described, won their opening fixture of the campaign at Bristol City and the Town manager says that this season there seem to be an unusually large number of away victories at all levels: "I think throughout football, if you look at the results, there are more away wins than there ever have been.
"There are a couple of reasons for that. Teams sit back more and play on the counter-attack away from home.
"When teams are at home the anxiety can creep in. If you don’t go a goal up early on the crowd can get a little bit anxious.”
Jewell says that making the home fans edgy will be amongst his pre-match instructions this afternoon: "The first thing we say when we go away is to try and get the crowd against the home team.
"But at the end of the day it’s basically the same-sized pitch, it’s the same-sized goal, the same football, just a different colour, and we sometimes can make more of it than we should.
"But there should be an advantage playing at home because you’ve got your supporters and you hope [you might just get the best of the referee], although that doesn’t seem to happen for us with referees! I want our players to look forward to games both home and away.”