Assistant boss Stuart Taylor says the Blues’ pre-season has been good, despite not knowing quite what to expect when the squad reassembled at Playford Road on July 22nd having been away from the club since 2019/20 was suspended on March 13th.
In terms of friendly results, the Blues won only twice, the 4-0 and 1-0 victories over Colchester in the 75-minute double header at the JobServe Community Stadium.
They were beaten 3-0 by Tottenham at the North Londoners' new stadium, then 4-1 by West Ham at Portman Road before the 1-0 loss to League Two Cambridge United on Saturday.
Nevertheless, Taylor’s view of pre-season overall is positive but while frustrated by some aspects of the games.
"I think pre-season has been good, and I use the word good because going into it we didn’t really know what to expect,” Taylor said.
"Nobody had experience of how you come back from lockdown, but the way we looked at it was that it was like lads coming back from a long-term injury and treated it that way, a little bit softly, softly, making sure we didn’t break them [by taking it] too quickly.
"We’ll always have a rigorous pre-season where the lads work really hard and they’ve done that, but over a longer period of time.
"We brought them in a week earlier than most clubs have done just to make sure that we’re giving them that extra week to blend them in.
"There’s been lots of good stuff in the games, there have been one or two things that we’ve been disappointed with, ie Saturday, but it’s a learning curve and it’s just making sure we eradicate the mistakes and making sure that we continue to do the right things.”
Town’s season starts on Saturday with the Carabao Cup tie at home to Bristol Rovers, then the EFL Trophy group game against Arsenal’s U21s next Tuesday, also at Portman Road.
Asked whether those matches will be treated like additional pre-season fixtures ahead of the League One opener against Wigan Athletic at home and live on Sky on Sunday 13th September, Taylor said: "There are two ways to look at it, you can turn around and say that we’ll use them as pre-season games, which I think a lot of clubs are going to do.
"Or the gaffer might just turn around and say ‘I’m going to go with my team and keep the jersey’.
"I’m not too sure what he’s going to go and do. I think that’s that a discussion that will happen throughout the week but come Thursday or Friday I’m sure the gaffer will have an idea of what he’s definitely going to go and do.”