Town continue their pre-season friendly programme against fellow Championship side Preston North End at Deepdale this evening (KO 7pm).
Having played four games so far, the 6-0 win at Felixstowe & Walton, the 2-1 victory over Maidenhead United at Needham Market and then Saturday’s two games in Austria, which ended in a 2-1 success against Slovakian side Spartak Trnava and a 2-2 draw with Flyeralarm Admira, manager Kieran McKenna says the Blues’ pre-season now moves into its next phase with the matches taking on greater importance.
"That’s how we planned it, these first couple of weeks, the training blocks were more important than the games really. The games were about getting minutes,” he said following the Admira draw in 35 degree heat south of Vienna.
"Preston will be a big step up and back to a more familiar environment to what we’ll face this year in terms of climate, pitch and everything like that. That will be a good test.
"It’s still too early to say that it’s a marker or anything but it will be a good test, a good step up for us. We’ll utilise the whole squad again for the minutes.
"And then we accumulate some match minutes next weekend [with the games at Cambridge and Stevenage] and we follow that with Luton and then two Bundesliga games [at the Innsbruck Cup back in Austria].
"For us, the first three weeks has been a block that we’ve looked at separate and now it’s really a two-week block where we ramp up the match minutes, we ramp up the quality of the opposition and that’s going to be really good for us. And then we can really look forward to the first game [at Sunderland on Sunday 6th August].”
This evening’s match will see the Blues come up against former striker Will Keane, who joined the Lilywhites from Wigan Athletic last week.
Ryan Lowe, who took over at Deepdale in December 2021 after leaving Plymouth, has made a further three signings this summer, midfield pair Mads Frøkjær-Jensen, from Odense in Denmark, and Duane Holmes, from Huddersfield, and on-loan Liverpool full-back Calvin Ramsay.
However, Holmes and Ramsay, who is recovering from injury, won’t be involved this evening.
Last season, Preston, who have been in the Championship for eight seasons now, finished 12th.
Striker George Hirst could make his first appearance since his permanent move from Leicester was confirmed last week.
The 24-year-old didn’t join his teammates in Austria having been suffering with a minor injury earlier in the summer which he sustained at the end of last season. He was due to start training on Monday.
George Edmundson missed Saturday’s games with an ankle problem which isn’t believed to be too concerning, while Wes Burns and Janoi Donacien picked up niggles in the matches and both were subbed as a precaution.
A number of youngsters have been involved in pre-season so far, but Rio Morgan, Leon Ayinde and Harry Barbrook were in the U21s team which won 2-0 at Hertford last night and so seem unlikely to play a part this evening. However, Ryan Carr and Fin Barbrook weren’t involved at Hertingfordbury Park.
Tickets will be available at the Bill Shankly Kop Ticket Office at Deepdale from 5pm for cash and card sales priced at £10 for adults, £5 for concessions and £1 for under-11s accompanied by someone aged over 18.
The game is being shown live by Preston on their iFollow service at a cost of £5.