New recruit Wes Burns has underlined his disappointment at Saturday’s embarrassing 5-2 home defeat by Bolton Wanderers that left Town still seeking their first win of the season in eight league and cup attempts.
Burns, whose four senior appearances in the current campaign have all been in a right-sided role, admitted: "It was one of those occasions that are gut-wrenching really.
"You never go out on a Saturday and expect to be turned over in the way that we were. I don’t think as a team that we ever expected the result to go that way.
"I know it’s been a really tough start to the season for us but when we sat down and looked at the first few fixtures we expected we could make a pretty good start to get things up and running.
"I know that in a lot of the games, probably 80 or 90 per cent of them, we have been in winning positions.
"When we do go ahead it’s about game management and we need to be a lot smarter than we are being at the moment, in terms of when to play out from the back, when to go long and play in the opposition’s half, and when to pin them in their half. Basically just stop their momentum from building in games.
"We are a new squad and I know the manager has said a few things in his press conferences about us being a new team and needing time to gel.
"We are still building relationships with each other in training and it does take time for things like centre-back pairings.
"We’ve had three or four of them already this season, while right-backs and left-backs have changed and up front there have been changes as well.
"Injuries that we’ve picked up along the way have also been responsible for changes to the team and that hasn’t helped.
"All in all, I think it’s just a case of us getting back to the training ground and working a lot harder on basically being a lot more resilient and headstrong in games.”
Saturday’s atmosphere, when some supporters’ frustration led to a chorus of boos on the final whistle, was in stark contrast to the first home game of the season against Morecambe when fans were allowed to return to games after empty stands due to the Covid pandemic.
Burns recalled: "Looking back to that game, I think there were nearly 22,000 of them in the stadium that day. After nearly two seasons without fans it was great to walk out that day and receive such a fantastic reception from pretty much a full house.
"It was an experience I had missed, along with the sheer adrenalin that the fans can inject into you and what comes from playing in front of a crowd.
"Even just walking down the tunnel and emerging to see so many faces in the crowd is something that you enjoy as a player and you thrive off it really.”
Injury has made it something of a stop-start first campaign as a Town player for the ex-Bristol City player, who had loan spells at a number of clubs — Forest Green, Oxford, Cheltenham, Fleetwood and Aberdeen — before signing permanently for the Cod Army in 2017.
He had been there for four years before deciding not to renew his contract and instead head to Suffolk, only for an Achilles tendon problem to disrupt his first few weeks as a Town player.
Asked what the problem had been and if he was now 100 per cent fit, Burns said: "It was a kind of a weird one. I was injured without really being injured if that makes sense.
"It was what is called Achilles tendinitis and I had it on both my Achilles tendons. It’s basically just wear and tear and it gives me quite bad inflammation in both of them.
"It makes it quite difficult to run and they don’t have that much strength in them. I had time on the sidelines but I wasn’t an injured player who couldn’t run around and was unable to train.
"I could still go out and do various bits and bobs but I wasn’t 100 per cent where I could train every day and play on a Saturday.
"In the time I was away I worked with the strength and conditioning guys in the gym, trying to get the strength back through the Achilles and the calf.
"We had various appointments with specialists in London to make sure we were doing everything correctly. I’m still dealing with it now — I’m not 100 per cent yet — but I’m at a point now where I can go about training daily and at least get out there and play.”