New Town wingers Gwion Edwards and Jordan Roberts will be in the Blues squad which faces their old club Crawley Town at East Grinstead’s East Court this evening (KO 7.30pm).
Edwards’s £700,000 move to the Blues from Peterborough was confirmed today, a deal which will see the League Two Red Devils, from whom the Wales U21 international joined Posh two years ago, receive a six-figure sell-on windfall.
Roberts signed for Town on a free transfer at the end of last month having left Crawley, who are managed by former Austrialian international Harry Kewell, in May.
Town manager Paul Hurst will be looking for an improved performance and result tonight having been disappointed with the display as his side lost 2-0 to Vanarama National League Braintree on Saturday.
"I’ll be looking for more and the players will know that,” he said following the game at Cressing Road.
"It’s not easy coming to places like this. Naturally the opposition are going to raise their game and it’s not the perfect surroundings, but that’s a great recipe from my point of view to learn about the players.
"We can all play when it’s a beautiful pitch and things are going really well. What about when things aren’t going quite the way we want to? Because I can guarantee there will be times like that in the season. We hope there won’t be very many times like that, but it will happen.
"You can always take something out of it, but overall I am not going to hide the fact that I am disappointed in what I saw today.”
Town are likely to take a similar approach as at Braintree with a senior side starting and playing around an hour before the younger players in what's likely to be a large travelling squad take over for the final 30 minutes.
We recommend De La Warr Road car park which is a 15 minute walk from East Court.
— Crawley Town FC (@crawleytown) July 16, 2018
Keeper Bartosz Bialkowski will be involved for the first time having returned to the club following his post-World Cup break, the Poland international having signed his new contract yesterday.
Left-back Jonas Knudsen, who was also in Russia with Denmark, won’t be back with the Blues until next week.
Tonight's game is one of two Crawley friendlies being played at East Grinstead as their home ground, the Broadfield Stadium, is undergoing extensive work on its pitch this summer.