Blues boss Kieran McKenna felt his side’s 2-1 victory over Maidenhead United capped off a tough week on the training ground with his side looking at a few variations on their system during the match.
Marcus Harness and Freddie Ladapo netted the goals which saw the Blues to their second pre-season win.
"Similar to Saturday, the main thing is to get through the game with no injuries, which we managed to do,” McKenna said.
"It caps off what’s been a really, really difficult training week in a positive way. The players have pushed really hard and it’s a good way to finish it off.
"Everyone got 45 minutes in their legs, or everyone who played tonight played 45 minutes, no injuries and it sets up well now for the next few weeks.”
It was noticeable that Leif Davis was tending to play more centrally than was the case last year and McKenna says tweaks to the system are something which are being looked at during pre-season.
"We’ve been working on a few variations, not loads,” he said. "We have different variations within our system anyway but we’ve been working on just trying things out in these games.
"We know a lot of the stuff that we did last year really well, so we’re just giving the players some different options and different variations and today and little bits last week as well, to be fair, Leif was playing a bit more centrally with Kyle [Edwards] playing as a more traditional winger on that side.
"We always want to develop the players individually and develop us as a team, and different variations that can help us at different times of the season. Games like this are a good chance to have a look at those things.”
"Does that mean that at times it might appear there’s less control of a game in pre-season than is usually the case?
"That’s for a lot of reasons,” McKenna continued. "The players are probably coming into the game very tired, to be honest and that’s part of it, it’s at the end of a long week.
"The pitch is very different to what we play on and we’re challenging them with some different things to give a go on the pitch and see how it feels.
"That’s one way that we can improve as a team, by having different variations up our sleeve.
"We don’t expect or necessarily need for it to look perfect today or last week or next week even, we want to make sure we’re ready come Sunderland we want to set ourselves up for a good season.”