Christophe Berra has underlined his desire for Town to improve on last season’s promotion near miss when the new campaign gets under way next week.
The central defender cites Mick McCarthy’s summer recruits and the strong possibility of yet more new signings arriving ahead of the big kick-off as major reasons for his confidence that this could be Town’s year.
Berra said: "We are looking to improve on what we achieved last season, which obviously means automatic promotion or to do it through the play-offs. But we’re not alone in that and there will be 10 to 12 teams all thinking the same.
"The Championship is such a crazy league that if you get a bit of momentum going almost anything can happen.
"There’s been a lot of big spending going on. Derby have splashed the cash and that’s their way. They are a big club and it puts a lot of pressure on them to go up.
"But that’s the way they are going to go and they will be looking to go up automatically.
"We’re just worrying about ourselves. We don’t spend that much but there is still pressure. There is the expectation of the fans, for a start, because they expect us to do better.
"We also put pressure on ourselves as professionals — we want to go out and perform every week and we’re very proud so we want to keep our standards very high.
"There is pressure in every game, even the pre-season friendlies, because it’s all about winning. We’re not always going to play fancy football.
"Sometimes we might play well and score a few goals but generally speaking in the Championship you never know what is going to happen.”
Berra, along with Republic of Ireland pair Daryl Murphy and David McGoldrick, was granted extended leave over the close season as a result of his international commitments with Scotland.
He added: "I was away with Scotland for 10 or 11 days and now I’m back and ready to go. It’s a pity I’ll miss the first game at Brentford through suspension but there are 46 in our league and I’m sure it will prove to be another hard season.
"We have a few new boys in the squad to refresh things — it’s important you do that and I’m sure we’ll try to get a couple more in before the Brentford game.”
Meanwhile, back on the international scene, Berra is buzzing about the draw for the World Cup that paired England and Scotland together in the group stages to determine which countries will battle it out in the finals to be hosted by Russia in almost three years’ time.
He grinned: "England won’t be looking forward to it. From their point of view they have everything to lose, while we are on the up and have improved dramatically under Gordon Strachan. It will be two tough games for them that we’ll be looking to win.
"But we’ve still got four Euro qualifiers to play and we’ll know our fate by October. If we’re in the play-offs they are in November.
"Our next game is Georgia away and although we beat them 1-0 at home they are no mugs and we’ll need to be on top form to get a result out there. With regard to the England games they are still a long way off.”