McKenna: I've Not Watched Any of the Games
Thursday, 30th Mar 2023 15:49

Boss Kieran McKenna insists he’s not watched the games involving the Blues' League One promotion rivals during the international break.

Town, who travel to take on Derby on Saturday, have been without a game in a fortnight due to international calls but meanwhile Sheffield Wednesday in second have taken a point from three matches, one a defeat to fourth-placed Barnsley, who themselves lost 3-1 at Exeter on Tuesday.

“I honestly haven't watched any of the games,” McKenna said. “The only League One team I've watched in the past two weeks has been Derby. I watched an awful lot of their games.

“Of course, you keep an eye on the results and see how teams are getting on, but there are still nine games to go for us, there are a lot of points to play for.

“I think you can see in the results that every game is going to be difficult, every game brings its challenge and the key for myself, certainly personally, is not to waste any emotional energy thinking about other teams that we don't play against.

“And we give those messages to the squad and that is where our focus is. Our focus is on ourselves and focusing on the next opponent.”

McKenna is delighted to be going into those final nine games - eight in April - in the hunt for promotion.

“It's really exciting and it's where we want to be,” he said. “You work hard from pre-season to put yourself in a position at the end of the season where you're ready to compete for things, and we're in that position.

“We've earned enough points to be in with a say and we're really looking forward to the month.

“It's a really busy month and I think it's quite unique for the end of the season to be so busy.

“Probably the World Cup and things like that affected the fixtures, so it leaves you with a really busy run-in for everybody.

“Lots of games and lots to look forward to and it's an exciting time for the supporters and an exciting time for us.

“We're just looking forward to the next games, looking forward to Derby, a great game and a big challenge, and we have Wycombe after that at home on Good Friday, and the games will just keep on coming.”

Asked whether Town are now in a title race given the results during the international break, McKenna laughed.

“We’ve not spoken about aims like that over the course of the season the whole time,” he said.

“Of course, at the start of the season, you set your targets as a group and they’re for me and the group to keep to ourselves until the end of the season.

“You set your targets at the start of the season and from there it’s about what your culture and your values are and ours are about preparing to perform to the best that we can every week and not focusing too much on other teams, not focusing on any outside noise, whether we’re on a particularly good run or on not such a good run and focusing on the next opponent and going out and making sure that over the 46 games we perform as well as we can in every game.

“Our focus hasn’t changed on that. We haven’t spoken to the players about other teams or other results or anything like that. It’s about being ready for Derby.

“You can see how difficult every game is and certainly this one is one that probably doesn’t to be ramped up in terms of the challenge.

“We know how difficult it’s going to be and it takes 100 per cent of our focus to give ourselves a chance to get the result.”

Pressed on whether he has any points or wins targets, he added: “We haven’t used that all season, so we’re certainly not going to start doing that now.

“We’ve spoken all season about focusing on ourselves, focusing on performance, keeping improving our details, improving individually and collectively and the points will be counted up at the end.

“There are still 27 points to play for, there’s such a busy run of games, teams playing twice a week, home and away, so many different factors in there that to focus at the moment on anybody else would be a waste of emotional energy and we need all of our energy for the games that we have coming up.”

Photo: TWTD

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