Boss Kieran McKenna admits he’s virtually putting a new side together given the changes which have taken place at Town over the summer.
The Blues have lost a number of players who were core members of the team which won back-to-back promotions and played in the Premier League, skipper Sam Morsy, fellow midfielder Massimo Luongo, defenders Cameron Burgess and Axel Tuanzebe, and forwards Omari Hutchinson, Nathan Broadhead and Liam Delap.
McKenna is integrating new additions Kasey McAteer, Chuba Akpom, Azor Matusiwa, Ashley Young, Cedric Kipre and David Button, while Jens Cajuste has returned from Napoli for a second season on loan and with further signings expected before the deadline a week on Monday.
The pace of change is illustrated by Leif Davis being the only player to have started both today’s 1-0 defeat at Preston and the Blues’ last match at Deepdale, the 3-2 loss in January 2024.
"That’s the reality of it,” McKenna said when it was put to him that he is essentially having to build a new team. "That’s come around pretty quickly, but I think the cycle of a team goes a lot quicker when you have the journey that we have had.
"If you stay in the same division, have maybe one promotion then you keep the team together for maybe three, four, five, six years sometimes at times.
"But the scale of what we went through meant that the cycle of that team that did terrificly and we loved being a part of came around quicker than we would have anticipated for a lot of different reasons, not that we wouldn’t have wanted because part of it is the success of the club.
"The situation is what it is. We have a new team to build. We’re not where we want to be yet with the team. The situation, the expectation on us is different and I understand and we expect that, but the reality is that it’s a new group and a group that hasn’t been together that long, they haven’t played together in terms of starting matches very much.
"The reality is they haven’t won together very much either because if we’re talking about the players who joined us last year, they were trying to compete in the toughest league in the world at a brand new club for the first time at that level for nearly everyone.
"There’s a lot of work to do and we’re going to be trying to do that work under a fair bit of expectation. But that’s the reality and that’s what we have to step up to. We have to bring this team together, produce a team that we can be proud of, that we can be successful with and we need to do it as quickly as humanly possible.”
McKenna admits it’s a big week for the club as the Blues look to add to the squad, but with his mind still on the defeat to the Lilywhites.
"I think so,” he reflected. "I can’t really put my head to the recruitment side at the moment because I’m frustrated that we’ve not delivered better as a group with what we have here.
"I know the reasons for that, but it’s not about making excuses, it’s about keeping the demand strong on ourselves that we need to produce better.
"There are some pieces to the squad that we’d like to add to to really be as complete and as strong as we’d like to be and hopefully we can make some progress on that this week.
"We’ve got to make sure the numbers are right and deep enough that we have the cover, but not too deep that people are going to feel detached from what’s going on on the pitch.
"We’ve got to get all the right over the next nine or 10 days that’s left, but my overriding thought at the moment is on the group that’s here and how we push to get the most out of ourselves.”