Boss Kieran McKenna says there’s been a good energy around training this week with the Blues top of the league having won their last four matches, but with no one getting carried away with the impressive start to the campaign.
McKenna was pleased to have his squad on the Playford Road grass for a full week for once since last Saturday’s comprehensive 3-0 victory at Shrewsbury.
The win against the Shrews was the Blues’ third in a row away from home, the first time the club has achieved three away victories on the trot at the start of a season since their inaugural season as a professional club, 1936/37 when they went on to carry off the Southern League title.
"I think there’s a nice competitive edge to training at the moment,” McKenna said. "Everyone knows that the team’s performing well and players are generally doing well when they get an opportunity.
"I think across the MK, Burton and Shrewsbury games, we managed to us a lot of the squad, a lot of different outfielders started, which is important.
"And that means that when you have a training week like this week that everyone knows that they’re competing for places and the level has to be high.
"There’s been a nice edge to training all week. Obviously, the energy is good, as you would expect and everyone’s raring to go for Barnsley now and what’s going to be a really tough game.”
While all seems to be going well on the pitch, off the field this week saw the Blues’ new black-out third strip sell record numbers in its first few days on sale with optimism levels in general remaining sky high in and around the club.
"We know there’s a lot of positivity and that’s fantastic, it’s what we want,” McKenna said. "Hopefully the fans have enjoyed the start to the season, the club are doing fantastic work in all the other departments, the kit being an example of that.
"There’s a lot of good things going on and credit to everyone around the club for their contributions to that, credit to the fans for the way that they’re getting behind us, but, to be honest, I don’t look at any of it or get carried away with any of it.
"For us, it’s about the next game, we know that momentum can change quickly. We who are involved on the football side of it need to keep our eyes solely focused on one game at a time and get ready for the next challenge.
"And the next challenge is Barnsley, a strong team, a big football club, who are coming here desperate to get some points on the board and we need to be absolutely focused and ready to do everything we can to take the three points.”
He says the players are of a similarly grounded mindset: "I think there’s enough experience there to understand that it’s a very long season and what you’re doing in August isn’t really a massive big part of that.
"We’ve spoken about it right from the first day of pre-season about what’s going to be important over the course of a long run right the way through to May 6th which is when the last league game is next year.
"The players are really grounded and really aware because of their experiences and the conversations that we’ve had that the important things are going to be being humble, working hard and being ready for the fight every Saturday or every Tuesday, and that I think is the only thing anyone here is focused on.”