Town manager Kieran McKenna says the squad has had a good training week following the 1-0 home victory over West Brom, which he says was a good way to end what had been a difficult week in which the Blues had lost 3-0 to Charlton Athletic at Portman Road.
The loss to the Addicks was Town’s first at home in the Championship in 26 matches stretching back to the 4-3 loss to Leeds United in August 2023. It was their heaviest loss on their own turf in the division since Aston Villa beat a 10-man Town side 4-0 in April 2018.
The hard-fought win against a West Brom team which did little other than try to make it difficult for the Blues put Playford Road in a positive frame of mind as the players prepared for this Saturday’s visit to QPR.
"Of course, you feel better after a win at the weekend,” McKenna said. "Look, we know it wasn’t the week overall that we wanted coming back after the international break after a really good spell before the last internationals.
"But it was a good way to finish it. I said going into the games with the group, and I felt the same after, that if we could come out of that week with a positive result and with the right type of performance it could be, maybe over the course of the season, a good week for us where we went through a little bit of suffering.
"We came out with a really resilient display and a good win against a tough West Brom team.
"It does give everyone a positive direction going into this week and we’ve had a good training week, probably our last training week now until after we play Leicester in the middle of December.
"We know it’s a really busy schedule coming up. So we’ve tried to use the week well. A few little injuries that we’ve had to try and address and get on top of, but those who have been training have been really focused and worked well, and everyone’s looking forward to the next week.”
After the Baggies match, McKenna referred to a "difficult atmosphere” and he was asked whether that had an impact on him or his players.
"Not so much on me,” he reflected. "I think on the players. We’d had a difficult week going up to it and we’d lost a home game in the midweek, which is very, very rare for us.
"Going into it, the next game is just another three points, but it’s got some extra importance and we felt pretty clear on the type of game that we needed to play last weekend.
"In terms of, after a bad game, trying to be really sort of solid, controlling the game well with and without the ball, not give much away and having a really good stable performance, and we managed to do that.
"I thought the players showed really good resilience in that way, really good concentration, good belief in themselves and in the group to stick together and trust that our play and our quality would get us the result that we wanted.
"In those ways, we showed a lot of the qualities that we’re going to need, and it was a good game.”
Reflecting on the Championship in general, McKenna believes what’s always a close division for the most part is perhaps even tighter this time around with the relegated Premier League clubs not yet making an impact at the top end of the table.
Town are currently 12th, albeit with a game in hand on all those above them, Leicester are 10th and Southampton in 20th.
"I think the competitiveness across the division is even higher,” the Blues boss continued. "Of course, you look at the investment in teams coming down from the Premier League, they have an advantage with parachute payments and things like that.
"But if you look at the investment of the teams at the bottom of the division, that’s different than it was last time around [Town’s 2023/24 promotion season].
"Our spend to get to the Premier League over the course of a few seasons I’d imagine was a lot lower than Charlton’s is this year, coming up from League One. And that’s not at them, that’s just as an example.
"When you have Wrexham and Birmingham coming up to the division as well and heavily investing, it brings the bottom of the league up.
"I think it’s a really, really competitive division and always has been, but probably more competitive than ever this year. You can see different challenges for different teams.
"Teams coming down from the Premier League generally have good squads and good squad depth, but lots of teams now have good squad depth. I think everyone understands the five substitutes and the depth of division. There’s an advantage to having a bigger group.
"You can see the benefit of teams who have been together a little bit longer and a few of the teams at the top of the division are probably benefiting from a few years together, the likes of Coventry maybe, who have been in and around the play-offs now for three or four years and have built up fantastically well.
"It’s a competitive division, one of the most competitive in world football, no doubt about that in terms of every weekend, the gap between a team at the top end of the division and a team at the bottom being really, really small, and so many of the games decided on tight things.
"So other than that, we don’t think about it too much. You only think about yourself and know that it’s going to take an awful lot over 46 games every week. You have to fight for the right to play well and to try to earn a result.
"We knew what we were getting into. It certainly has [been what we expected], if not more competitive than ever and it’s going to take a big, big effort to be successful.”