Town manager Paul Hurst says it’s going to take the likes of Emyr Huws, Teddy Bishop, Joe Garner, Danny Rowe and Tom Adeyemi a while to reach the fitness levels of their team-mates who have trained throughout pre-season.
Bishop, Garner and Rowe were involved throughout yesterday’s Open Day training session on the Portman Road pitch, while Adeyemi played a more minor part - much to his manager’s frustration - and Huws trained on his own with new physio Chris Skitt.
"It is [going to take time] and the difficulty is that you start to put demands on them a little bit sooner than you really want to and they end up maybe suffering a recurrence of their injury and that’s the last thing we want to do,” Hurst said.
"Again, if anyone comes to the training ground, they might see them out there on a regular basis.
"I had a lad last season at Shrewsbury who was on the training pitch for a long, long time and I was asking, ‘Is he ready?’.
"If it comes down to it it’ll be my decision, I've got to trust the medical people and he wasn’t quite ready.
"And again, that will be tough, especially if it’s not going the way we want, you’re thinking, ‘He’s got to be ready, get him in there!’ but we’ve got to try and play the longer game and not be short-sighted. Again we’re back to that word, we’ve got to show that patience to do that.”
Regarding Joe Garner, who started pre-season before suffering a knee problem but was back involved on Thursday, he said: "Joe’s trained, I think he’s still feeling a bit sore.
"I don’t know if that means at this moment in time whether that means he’s sore as in sore he won’t be back out there tomorrow and not available for Saturday or it was more ‘I’ve made my first steps back, I’m not going to do anything silly, go away and I'll train again tomorrow’. I couldn’t tell you at this moment in time.
"Certainly he’s one that falls into that category that’s missed a chunk of pre-season now and it’s difficult to get back.”
Meanwhile, Hurst continues his search for new additions ahead of the transfer window closing on August 9th.
Beyond that deadline, EFL clubs can sign players on loan until the end of the month with the facility that those deals can be turned into permanent switches in January.
Hurst says is aware of that route and it is one he may opt to utilise with permanent signings his priority rather than loans.
"I understand that that is out there for clubs to do,” he said. "At the same time, I don’t know why they’ve changed it too much rather than just keeping the normal loan system anyway, unless a club won’t let someone go unless it’s a payment, things like that.
"Clubs have always utilised the loan market, we’re one of those, and I’ve been used to having to do that, so that’s not a particular concern I’ve got on that side.
"It’s just I think we would benefit from having some permanent players in, you know they’re going to be here, you’ve got time to work with them, get them to where you want to be and if they’re doing well you’re not going to lose them come January.”