Manager Paul Lambert says he and his staff have “tweaked a couple of things” as he looks for his side to make a significant improvement from last year’s hugely disappointing 11th place in League One.
"We’ve tweaked a couple of things from last season, we started obviously in the Championship and made a great start in League One last year,” he said after yesterday's 3-0 loss at Tottenham.
"We’ve changed to what I think is going to suit us and tweaked a couple of things that we want to try and do and I think it’s shown with the way we’ve tried to play football and I’m really pleased.”
Previously the Blues manager has talked about needing to learn lessons and says consistency is among them. He also hints that the much-criticised rotation policy won't be enforced so strictly in the campaign ahead with players challenged to cement their places in the starting XI.
"Consistency, and everybody has to give me a problem of keeping the shirt,” he said. "If you’re in the team and you’re playing well, you stay in the team, that’s the message the guys all know - if you’re doing well and you’ve got the shirt, stay in the side.”
"He says it’ll start to become clearer who will be in his starting XI for the season proper after the West Ham match at Portman Road on Tuesday.
"We’ve got another tough game on Tuesday, West Ham, it’s another cracking game for us,” he said. "We’ve got another one and then it starts.
"After the West Ham one, we’ll start to realise what’s going to happen. But I’m really happy with the guys considering they had five months of not playing.
"Tottenham have not long finished their season, they’ve had a few days’ break, we hadn’t done anything in five months other than the Colchester games and they were only 75 minutes. We’re in a really good place at the minute, it’s just about building on that.”
Lambert is disappointed that fans aren’t able to attend games at present with supporters not returning until October as things stand.
"It’s incredible, it really is,” he reflected. "This is the norm at the minute, and that’s sad. But what an arena this is in which to play football. This is why you want to be a footballer, it’s just unfortunate what’s happened.”
Had Town had a pre-season friendly away at Tottenham in normal times - an admittedly unlikely prospect - then they would have taken a significant number of fans.
"Listen, it would have been brilliant,” he said. "I’ve been here watching games before and well done to Tottenham for this, this is great. They’ve got a top manager, they’ve got top players but we never disgraced ourselves.”