Boss Mick McCarthy has a good idea of the team which will start against Fulham at home on the opening day of the season, but says other players can still force their way into his plans with several making a case for their inclusion during last night’s 3-0 friendly victory at Colchester.
"I kind of know, almost anyway,” he said. "It’s not going to be any great shock to me, they’ve only been away for 12 weeks.
"Nothing great changes over the summer, they don’t go and have football lessons and come back loads better or loads worse.
"The nucleus of the team is team is probably solid. I’m looking for somebody to shake it up and say ‘I want to be in that team’.
"And I think there were [some that did]. I thought Elliott Hewitt played well, I thought Ando was different class, I thought Alex Henshall (pictured) played very well. They were the ones who stood out.
"The back four are always OK, and Gerks. We didn’t function brilliantly everywhere else but we got better.”
Regarding Henshall, who joined on a permanent basis earlier in the summer following his release by Manchester City having been on loan last season, McCarthy added: "He’s really, really quick, he’s got good skills and he can go past people and that’s something we’ve lacked a little bit.
"But he’s got lots of other things to do as well, all the dirty jobs that all the others do, but when he gets the ball he’s a threat, a constant threat.”
Anderson probably had more of the ball than any other Town player during his time on the field and pleased his boss, despite missing an early chance.
"I thought Ando was great today,” McCarthy said. ”He could have scored with a header. It was a cross-shot from Frank and he didn’t manage to score but at least he [had the effort] and then he had a shot.
"So, in the first five or six minutes he’d had a header off target and a shot at goal. He’s really trying and I thought his all-round performance was particularly good.”
He says Marriott’s excellent goal came as no surprise: "I know he can put a ball in the net, he’s got to do all the other stuff as well.
"He’s got to be able to stick it and make sure that when we put the ball up to the frontmen it stays there because it didn’t in the first half and if that happens you’ll be scrapping away at the bottom of the league all the time.
"We need to be able to hold it up, Jack needs to get better at that and keep doing what he does because that’s a nasty habit that, keep putting the ball in the net.”
Speaking after the Shelbourne game, Marriott said that he didn’t consider himself a member of the first team squad having made only two sub appearances for the Blues, however, his manager views the situation differently: "I see him as a member of the first team squad, without a doubt.
"He’s in there competing and if he’s better than the others, he’ll play. It’s a really physical league, the Championship. I think he’s improved on that.
"Who knows, he might get that sub spot and he’s Johnny on the spot because he knows how to get the tap-ins and he gets his shots on target. I was only surprised he didn’t hit the target against West Ham. He’ll be part of the squad.”
Elsewhere, former Blues loanee Guirane N’Daw has joined newly-promoted French Ligue 1 side Metz on a two-year deal. N’Daw was with Asteras in Greece last season having been with Town during the previous campaign.