Town wrap up their pre-season friendly programme with two 60-minute games against Bundesliga opposition at the Innsbruck Cup in Austria on Friday with the matches shown live on TownTV.
The Blues take on Leipzig, who were third in last year’s Bundesliga to qualify for this season’s Champions League, at 2.30pm CEST (1.30pm BST) and the Werder Bremen, who finished 13th in 2022/23, at 5pm CEST (4pm BST) with the two German sides facing one another in between. A TWTD blog outlining in detail what Town can expect from the Bundesliga teams can be found here.
The Blues previously played at the Tivoli Stadion in the 1978/79 European Cup Winners’ Cup second round when they drew 1-1 with SW Innsbruck after extra-time to claim a 2-1 aggregate victory. The stadium currently has a capacity of 17,000 and hosted games during Euro 2008.
Town boss Kieran McKenna, speaking after Tuesday’s 1-1 draw with Luton at Colchester, says Friday’s matches will be tougher than the Blues’ previous friendlies.
"A really exciting trip, two 60-minute games against very, very high level opponents, so it’s going to be a massive step up,” he said.
"It’s going to be a challenge for us, especially missing the bodies but it’s one we’ll go and embrace.
"I’m sure we’ll learn from it and we’ll get things from it and we have to have a good discussion with the group over the next day or two about what we’re going to get out of the games and how we’re going to approach them.
"It will be a good experience and a great way to finish off the pre-season campaign, not just on the pitch but also off the pitch, going away together and then we come back and from Monday onwards we can really focus and enjoy and look forward to the big game [the season opener at Sunderland on Sunday 6 August] coming up next weekend.”
The Northern Irishman says he’ll be splitting his squad across the two games to ensure everyone gets more time under their belts.
"No secret, that will be the plan, all being well we’ll get 60 minutes into everyone who is here tonight,” he added.
Forward Nathan Broadhead picked up a minor quad injury against the Hatters and hasn’t made the trip, remaining behind to undergo treatment on the knock. Yesterday he posted a photo from inside what appeared to be a hyperbaric chamber.
"Broady was excellent for the time he was on the pitch,” McKenna said at Colchester. "He’s getting stronger and hopefully he’s not got too much of an issue with the little quad injury that he came off with and he’s looking forward to the season.
"He just said he felt something tight in his quads, so when that’s the case in pre-season, you don’t take any risk at all, so we got him off and we’ll see how it is tomorrow [Thursday].
Another player who hasn’t gone to Austria is Cam Humphreys, who took a blow to the head at Preston last week.
"No, his concussions protocols will run through until the weekend,” McKenna added. "So it’ll be the following week before he’s back.”
Massimo Luongo missed Tuesday’s match having picked up a niggle at Cambridge and Harry Clarke remains on the sidelines and both seem likely to have remained behind in England when the squad flew out from Heathrow on Thursday.
"Massimo’s not too serious but he felt a little issue in his adductor, so we’ll have to see how he is but at the moment it’s unlikely we’ll bring him on the Austria trip, we’ll probably let him recover,” the Blues manager continued.
"Harry Clarke, we’re reviewing at the moment, he’s had a longer standing issue with his achilles.
"He had a course of treatment over the off-season that the club hoped would clear it but it hasn’t cleared it so far, so we’re reviewing what the next course of action is with him.”
Asked to reflect on what’s most pleased him about pre-season so far, McKenna said: "We’ve got through a lot of work. We’ve really pushed the players in a good way and we need to because we’re going to a higher level and the physical demands of the Championship are a big, big step up statistically from League One, so we need to be ready to make that step up.
"We’ve got through a lot of work. I think you can see on the pitch, whenever we focus into a game and prepare for the game that the chemistry and the connections from last year are still there and we want to strengthen and improve them now.
"On a tactical level and in our football, we know that the good elements of our game are still there and I think we’ve been able to push the players to another level physically and we need to keep doing that.”
TownTV, the Blues’ new in-house service, will be providing dedicated commentary from regular commentator Glenn Wheeler and pitchside presentation with Blues legend Matt Holland and lifelong Town fan James Tzanoudakis.
Fans who subscribe to TownTV prior to Firday will be able to watch both Bundesliga matches at no additional cost.