Blues CEO Mark Ashton has been reflecting on the situation at the top of League One and says the relentless rebuilding of the club will continue whether Town go up this season or otherwise.
The Blues are currently third in the division behind Plymouth and Sheffield Wednesday with Barnsley at their heels behind them with the automatic promotion places looking set to go right to the wire.
"That’s just the nature of it,” McKenna reflected in the first part of an interview with TWTD we’ll be running over the next few days.
"It’s a difficult league and why do I think it’s a difficult league? Because I think there’s such a wide ranging spectrum of clubs that play in different ways, have different facilities, have different pitches and different set-ups. It’s very wide-ranging and that brings different sets of challenges.
"We said last season that we wanted to score more goals and I think we’ve certainly done that. I think the way we play is an attractive style of football.
"I think we’ve made wise investments and what you see now is a team and a club that has an asset value that is growing on the pitch.
"We have taken our own route and our route has not been to loan five or six players and develop them for their parent club.
"I think one or two is fine, but the core of our squad is our players and we grow their value and they stay with us whatever league we’re in.
"That was an approach we talked to the owners about when we acquired the club and we’ve been true to it.
"If you look at the type of player we’ve acquired, whether that’s Christian [Walton], whether that’s [Harry] Clarke, Broady [Nathan Broadhead], Leif [Davis], whether that’s the homegrown emerging talent of [Luke] Woolfenden and [Cameron] Humphreys, those players have value.
"They have a value of ð‘¥ in League One and they have a value of 4ð‘¥ in the Championship and they have a value of anything times anything in the Premier League.
"It’s a model that we want to build where they’re our players and that fits into why we’ve brought in a manager in [Kieran] McKenna, who is not only a first class manager but he’s an outstanding coach and player developer.
"This hasn’t randomly been thrown together, this has been knitted together over time. And I still firmly believe we’re only at the beginning of the journey.”
What if Town don’t go up this season? "Nothing changes. You do more of it. Repetition, repetition, repetition. You’ve known me long enough now, no one will want this club to be promoted this season more than me and if I could physically get out there and do it myself I would, but let’s be clear, I’d be more of a hindrance than a help!
"We’re talking about almost two decades worth of under-investment and underachievement and a club, whether it’s on the pitch or off the pitch, that has gone substantially backwards.
"McKenna’s only been here just over a year, I’ve been here just over 18 months now. We can’t fix it all in one go.
"I’d love to say we can just do this and I can guarantee that we’re going to be promoted here, I can guarantee the stadium’s going to be done then, I can guarantee the training ground’s going to be done then, but there’s a lot of work to do.
"I think sometimes it’s easier when you’re rebuilding a smaller club because there isn’t the expectation that comes with it. But right now, as Kieran says, we’re a League One club. We might be a League One club that’s getting 28-30,000, is smashing records in retail, ticketing etc, but we’re a League One club.
"And there is a reason why the club has been in League One for a period and it’s why that trapdoor to League One was opening for a period, and we’ve got to put it right.
"I think we’ve got a great chance, but so have others. If we get up we’ll build and we’ll go again. If for any reason we find ourselves in this division again next season, we’ll add and build and we’ll go again.
"We will be relentless in taking this club forward. The owners are right behind it, they understand the dynamics of what we’re trying to build and where we’re at, but I think we’re in a decent place.”