Town boss Kieran McKenna says it’s been a challenging start to the season but with positives to be taken from it, the Blues having drawn both their opening fixtures 1-1 against sides also expected to be in the division’s upper echelons come May.
The Northern Irishman was pleased to have his players for a few days in midweek following the Southampton home game on Sunday, Town having begun their return to the Championship sharing the points away at Birmingham City nine days previously.
"It has been good to get a couple of days with the players, although it is still a short week to be honest,” he said.
"When you play on a Sunday, it doesn’t really feel like a full week because we are recovering until the Tuesday.
"But we’ve had a couple of days on the grass and a good chance to debrief the game properly with the whole team, and also in smaller groups which is always important.
"A little bit more time for the group to be together with some new players on the pitch - it has been a good couple of days.”
Looking back on the display against the Saints, he added: "I think Birmingham hardly was a football match, to be honest, both teams. It was the lowest ball in play of any game we’ve had. It was a scrap.
"Sunday was probably scrappier than we want it to look like or idealise, but there were some passages where we put some moves together.
"Certainly some of the moves we put together from the back of the pitch to the front could have ended up in goals. That was much more like us.
"Our intensity has been good across both games and we started to see a bit more of our football come out in the second game and we have to keep building on that.”
It was put to McKenna that two draws with sides expected to join Town in challenging for promotion isn’t a bad return given the squad’s current state of flux.
"It could be better, but we knew it was going to be a difficult start,” he reflected. "We knew it was going to be a challenging summer and it has been even more challenging than we probably would have predicted.
"The Friday night away game at St Andrew’s was always going to be a really tough game, whoever got that one. It transpired to be just that and we were not at our best. But we found a way to get a result from the game.
"Then on Sunday, it was a good step forward in terms of our performance, although with lots of improvements still to do. But against a strong Southampton side, I think we deserved to win the game on the balance of play.
"It’s nice to be undefeated, although it would have been much nicer to have won one of the two games alongside a draw.
"But, of course, it’s important to get points nice and early in the season. We would have loved to have been off and running nicely in that department but it is also something to be undefeated.
"More importantly, we need to keep trying to make the right steps and that our performances trend in the right direction. It is not always linear but we need to see growth in the team and growth in the individual performances and connections building on the pitch.
"We need to manage to sort situations off the pitch and build the best squad we possibly can over the next week to 10 days and pick up some points and performances along the way.
"It was a challenging start but there are positives to take, even though we would have liked to have had a few more points on the board.”