Town boss Paul Cook believes the Blues will have to win around 27, 28 or 29 games this season, picking up between 85 and 90 points, to be promoted and says he is waiting for the transfer window to end which he believes will bring some “sanity” and allow him to concentrate on integrating the new players.
With 14 signings made and more expected, it was always anticipated that it would take a little time for the squad to gel.
In that context, the nature of the performance in last Saturday’s home opener against Morecambe, which ended 2-2 wasn’t a surprise.
One positive was the team coming from behind twice, showing a resilience which last year’s side was often accused of lacking.
Asked whether he felt that the team he inherited would have come back to draw against the Shrimps, Cook said: "I’m not going to judge last year, there’s no point. Historically, there’s no point.
"One of the things that big and successful clubs in the past do, they always look back, but the reality is that looking back won’t take you forward.
"For us it’s just repetition. Some of my answers you’ll get bored with, I’ll try and send the other coaches out. I just like working hard on the training ground, I just like recreating the moments from Saturday on the training ground and the moments will come where we might have prolonged periods of possession, we may have to go round teams, we may have to open teams up, we have to produce moments of quality.
"If that’s not the case we might have to dig in at times and defend and we’ll have to be very well organised to do that.
"My job now, I don’t get embroiled in your side of the game, if you like, where one minute it’s a high and one minute it’s a low. For us to be successful this year and be promoted, we’re going to have to win probably 27, 28, 29 games, whatever it is.
"We’re going to have to get 85, 90 points. The target is if you keep getting one [point] and one and one, you’re going crawling along very, very slowly, aren’t you? So eventually we’ve got to start winning games if we want to get to where we want to be.
"But we’ve played one league game. One. And for me, we’ve got so many new lads in the building, we’ve got so many different permutations of players. What is our best team going forward? We don’t know.
"It’s the partnerships being allowed to train together to develop together to play together. It’s the crowd getting behind the team, it’s the lads feeling that noise in the stadium that will carry us home.
"At the minute, we’re just taking the smallest baby steps towards that and hopefully our steps can get bigger soon.”
Reflecting further on his new side grabbing a point last week via Macauley Bonne’s 91st minute debut goal, he added: "Credit to the players, credit to the lads because it was probably at a point in the game where we least looked likely to score.
"I felt the game had drifted away from us, I felt the referee was losing a little bit of control over it with bookings and time-wasting. That’s football, that’s part of what we have to manage.
"Great credit to the players. As I say, you’ll never hear me criticise the players, we’ve got a lot of lads who have come together for the first time, they’re moving to the area, they’re in hotels, they’re changing hotels for apartments, they’re trying to move in, their missuses, their girlfriends, the kids are coming down.
"We’ve got medicals going on every other day. To say the training ground’s busy is not doing busy justice.
"From my point of view as a manager, I just want to get to a point where we get a bit of sanity into the group. The window closes, let’s have it right.
"Once that transfer window closes, we can all concentrate on the fact that that’ll probably be the squad done, we now have to train together, the lads have to integrate together and there’s a long season ahead.
"And we’ll have highs and lows, that’s the nature of the game. My job as a manager, and I think because I’ve gained a little experience by doing it, is to manage the highs and the lows to have an equal level.”