Boss Kieran McKenna says no upper limit should be put on what can be achieved at Town having signed a new four-year deal with the Blues yesterday, tying him to the club until the summer of 2027.
McKenna led Town to promotion from League One in his first full season as a manager and was pleased to commit his future to the Blues having returned from a break following the club’s May celebrations.
Pre-season training ahead of the 2023/24 season in the Championship gets under way on Monday 26th June.
"I’m delighted,” he said in a lengthy interview with the club’s in-house media. "It’s a joyous day really.
"It’s been a few weeks in the offing and I’ve been on holidays as well, so I’ve just been glad to get back yesterday and be able to get in today and sign for this wonderful football club.
"I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time so far and it’s on to the next step now. We’ve made a lot of progress, we’re in a good direction, but I arrived here with a lot of ambition and matching the ambition that myself and [CEO] Mark [Ashton] spoke about that the ownership have and it’s about pushing on with that now.
"It’s a really good day for me and my family, very proud to continue to represent this club and very grateful for the faith that they’ve put in me.”
Quizzed on what might be possible over the next four years, McKenna reflected that ambition.
"There’s no upper limit to be put on this,” the Northern Irishman insisted. "We know what we’re going into again, we’re humble going into next season. We’re going up to what’s going to be a really competitive division and the next step is that we have to be competitive at that level and show that we can compete, and that’s the challenge.
"But beyond that, we don’t want to put an upper limit on this football club because it’s operated at the highest levels of English football before and operated at the highest level of European football before.
"You can see and feel it as soon as you come here and you can see last year when we were filling the stadium and the difference it’s making to people’s lives and the backing of the whole community, and that’s when the club is operating in League One.
"So I think there’s a massive scope for this football club to keep growing but we know how hard that’s going to be and we know there’s no guarantees.
"We’re going into the season, I’m going into the next four years humble. The players and the staff will be the same but we also certainly won’t be putting any sort of upper limit on what we can achieve here.”