George Burley has warned his players that the five-day trip to Cyprus will not be a holiday; it will be more like a second pre-season.

The Blues boss said: "We are going there to prepare for our game against Southampton. It has been a long break but that is unavoidable so we will use this period to recharge our batteries. We are taking our fitness coach Simon Thadani with us so there will be a lot of hard work done over there. It is like a mini pre-season as such. The players have had a few days off but now it is back to hard work. We had two hard training sessions on Tuesday and we will be training twice a day while we are out there and we will be playing a charity game for the Army Benevolent Fund against Russian Premier League side Alania Vladikavkas before we come back on Monday."

Despite it being a working holiday the players will be given the afternoons to play golf or to relax in other ways.

Burley also reiterated his view that Town will need four more wins to make sure of Premiership safety. Last night Middlesbrough beat Fulham 2-1 to push Town down to 14th in the Premiership.

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