Skipper Sam Morsy has admitted Town’s four-game, 100 per cent start to the new season – three successive league wins to take them to the top of the Championship and another in the Carabao Cup – has been better than he dared imagine it would be before a ball had been kicked in earnest.
The experienced midfielder, who turns 32 next month, said: "It’s a great start. When you start a new season, you’re looking for your first win as quickly as possible, or your first away win, and we’ve done that.
"But it’s still very early days and we just have to take it one game at a time and just concentrate on focusing on the next one.”
But Morsy agrees there is a high level of confidence in the Blues’ dressing room right now, adding: "I think we’re confident from what we do every day within the process. Obviously, winning does help that, but you can easily nick wins and be a bit deluded in your confidence.
"Our confidence comes from the work we do on a daily basis and the wins are a bonus. The main source is the way we work, train and prepare – as well as how we play – and that’s what we will take into tomorrow’s game against Leeds, ahead of the fact that we’ve won a few games.”
Despite their disappointing start to the new campaign, comprising two draws and a defeat in three league games and their only win coming against Shrewsbury in the Carabao Cup, Morsy believes Leeds will be formidable opponents at Portman Road.
He said: "Every game poses a different challenge. In our first game of the season, we faced a Sunderland team that had qualified for the play-offs last season and now it’s a team that have just been relegated. Ultimately, it’s just a game of football.
"We know about Leeds’ quality, we know about the size of the club and we know we’re going to have to be at our best. We have to focus on ourselves and our home record has been really, really good for a long time now.
"The atmosphere when we played Stoke was absolutely incredible, so we have to bring that again along with our best game. It’s really all about us and how well we can perform.”
While a visit from Leeds might have been eagerly anticipated by some supporters ahead of the new season’s fixture list being unveiled, Morsy sees it differently, as just another game, a policy that has served Town well since manager Kieran McKenna arrived in December 2021 to make his mark.
The Egyptian international added: "I don’t look for any fixtures to be honest; I’m happy to wait and see what happens. Playing against Leeds will be a test for us because they have just been relegated and still have a lot of Premier League players.
"But it’s a challenge we look forward to facing because we want to face the best and see what we can achieve.”
Asked how he felt about being back in the second tier of the English game, a level with which he is familiar from earlier in his career, and how pleased he was with his team’s unbeaten start, Morsy continued: "We’re really pleased and you can’t get better than to win your first three games.
"But we know we’re not the finished article and we have to continue to work hard going forward and just take it one game at a time. In terms of tests at this level, they don’t come much bigger than Leeds United here this weekend.
"It’s still the start of the season and a lot of random results can happen. There are ins and outs, and it can be quite turbulent for the first month or so, but we’ve been pretty consistent in what we’ve been doing and how we’ve been playing. It’s been important to get the results, of course, but we must strive to keep improving.
"There are all sorts of situations to be dealt with. Don’t forget, the week before we went to Sunderland, Christian [Walton] got injured and we had to change our goalkeeper. It’s something we had to deal with and adapt to accordingly. Also, in that first half at Sunderland we couldn’t seem to find our level.
"It’s about all sorts of different challenges and a great deal just depends on the day and how you tackle them.
"The game against Stoke was probably our best one in terms of overall performance but, like I’ve said, each game throws up a different set of challenges and it’s mostly about how we deal with it. We have to adapt for each game but we also want to impose ourselves and our own style on each game.”
Morsy was asked if meeting a relegated club this early in the season might be a good thing, given Leeds are clearly not fully into their stride after a number of personnel changes, and he replied: "That doesn’t really play any part in my thoughts. You’ve only got to look at Leicester, who have won their first three games since coming down from the Premier League.
"It doesn’t really matter; it’s just an individual game at this stage of the season. For me there’s no such thing as form and momentum; it’s just the next game. Look at Coventry last season, they were bottom in October and nearly got promoted, so it’s irrelevant at the moment.
"Leeds are a really strong team and they have just made a really good signing in striker Joel Piroe from Swansea. Also, some of their best players are available again, so all I’m thinking is that we will have our hands full tomorrow.”