Town boss Paul Jewell says he wishes the season was starting today at Hull having used the loan market to put together what believes is the strongest squad he has had to work with since he has been at Portman Road. Short-term signing Nigel Reo-Coker and eighth loanee Stephen Henderson became the latest additions to the ranks earlier in the week.
Jewell said: "I wish the first game of the season was Saturday. That’s not to decry the lads who have been here so far, but I think everybody knows that the squad hasn’t been as strong as it is now for a while.
"We’re always looking to improve the squad and we’ve found it difficult for the reasons I’m explaining - clubs didn’t want to sell, clubs wanted too much money, wanted to loan players rather than to sell them, so we are where we are.
"I think after 10 games we’re obviously in the situation we’re in and the squad needs to be improved, and that’s what we’ve done.”
He says it’s the best group of players he’s had since he took over as manager after Roy Keane’s departure in January 2011: "I think we’ve got the strongest squad I’ve had since I came to the club, without a shadow of a doubt.
"That doesn’t mean that everything’s going to come right overnight, we’ve got to be careful that we don’t think everything’s rosy in the garden, but we’ve got a lot of quality.
"If I look at the bench now, I can make changes from the bench whereas sometimes since I’ve been here, without being disrespectful to people, we haven’t had too much to change it with.”
Jewell says integrating the new recruits has gone well during the international break: "Training’s been really good, it’s been really lively.
"They worked hard last week and, with the arrival of new, quality players, you look around the squad and you’ve got options, certainly going forward, we are a little bit light at the back, in the full-back areas, but certainly in terms of midfield and forward options we’ve got choice now.
"All of a sudden we’ve got different options,” he added. "We can play different systems and it gives me choice.”
He feels the squad is now more capable of taking on the division’s big spenders and says that in any case there had been progress in the games prior to the break: "I certainly think it’s competitive.
"We find ourselves in a really tricky, tough situation and I think we’ve got some men, some experienced players, in Danny Higginbotham, Nigel, Richie and DJ, who are going to help the dressing room get out of the sticky spell that we’re in.
"Not everything’s going to come right overnight, I’m aware of that. But if you look at the last three games, we got a fighting point at Barnsley, had a decent performance against Brighton and for long spells against Cardiff we were the better of the teams.
"We’ve played Brighton, who were top of the league and we played Cardiff, who were top of the league at the time, and you couldn’t really tell the difference between the three sides.”