McKenna: Today Was About Accumulating Minutes Saturday, 22nd Jul 2023 18:43 Manager Kieran McKenna’s main concern was his players accumulating minutes from this afternoon’s friendlies at Cambridge United and Stevenage with the results and performances not the main focus. The Blues fell to their first two defeats of pre-season, losing both matches 2-1 to the League One sides. “That’s what the day’s about really, it’s just about minutes,” McKenna said. “We had a really intense, high level game on Wednesday night [at Preston, where Town won 2-1] and a long travel and we managed to split the minutes across the group. But this was now just about getting as many as we possibly could towards the 90 minutes mark, minutes in the legs. “We have another big game on Tuesday night [against Luton at Colchester], which we think will be a good challenge and a high level game, and today was about accumulating the minutes and we managed to do that without too many problems.” He added: “I’m not just say that because we played well on Wednesday. That’s a game where you focus on the performance a little bit more because it’s a team in our league and the type of level that we’re going to come up against. “Today, performance and results take a secondary [place] to just getting out here and playing and accumulating those minutes. “Two good games, two tough games, two teams who are preparing for the League One season ahead and were super-motivated for the games, playing in their home stadiums. “Two difficult games, two different types of challenges but we’ll take bits from the games and we’ll review some bits that we did well, definitely some bits we could have done better, but the main thing was getting minutes into the squad, which isn’t always easy to do and we’re happy that we got that done today.” Did he feel the performances were impacted by how hard they’ve been worked on the training field? “I think so, and even just the scheduling,” the Northern Irishman reflected. “We want to challenge them, we’ve got the challenge that we don’t have a home stadium, so you might have to travel on Wednesday night than you might want from a game. “We’re pushing them with the schedule, we’re pushing them with having to back up the games. It’s going to be the same on Tuesday night. “I’m confident we’ll be a strong position when the season starts. We’ll get lots of football in next week and by the end of pre-season we’ll have had a lot of high quality work on the grass, a lot of minutes into their legs and then I think from our last game in Austria to Sunderland, we’ll have a full nine days to taper off and get the training load right and it’ll be all about giving ourselves the best chance to fly into that first game.” New loan signing Omari Hutchinson made his first appearance for the Blues at Cambridge and created a goal in only the second minute for Leif Davis. “I thought it was a good start for him,” McKenna said of the 19-year-old from Chelsea. “A very talented young player, has had some exposure to senior football, but not much and very limited minutes and hasn’t been around senior dressing rooms and players too much. “Really happy to take him in on his first loan. We think he’ll grow and develop as a player and a person, for sure. We also think that he can contribute to the team as well. “He showed some good things today, he made a good start, a positive first impression, but he’s hopefully here for the whole season and we’ll be patient with him and we’ll push him in the right ways and we’ll look forward to seeing how he develops.” At Stevenage, striker George Hirst scored his second goal in two games after coming off the bench at half-time, having rejoined the club on a permanent basis from Leicester just over a week ago. “Good to get George back in,” McKenna continued. “Good to get George Edmundson through 90 minutes for the first time [after his minor ankle knock], all of them for the first time, but good to get George back starting and getting George Hirst in. “It was quite an intense start to the game. When you’re coming here it’s going to be physical and man to man and aggressive and set pieces. ‘We didn’t really match that at the start of the game, to be honest. It took us probably the first half hour to get to grips to that but once we did that we played some OK football. “But we know we can be a lot better, but we know that when we’re fully focused in on the opponent and the game and the challenge ahead, we can deliver really good performances individually and as a team. We didn’t do that today but the priority wasn’t really there.” Massimo Luongo came off with a knock at Cambridge but McKenna says the problem isn’t believed to be significant, while he was pleased to give minutes to youngsters Ryan Carr, Leon Ayinde, Rio Morgan, the Barbrook twins, Osman Foyo, Nico Valentine and Zak Bradshaw. “Massimo had a bit of a tight groin, that was the only issue really,” he said. “Hopefully, we don’t think it’s anything major. That was the only issue and when you’re playing across two 90 minutes isn’t too bad. “And the other positive was getting to expose the young players again, whether it’s 10 minutes, 20 minutes or 30 minutes. “I’ve been in that position, it’s important to them, even for the boys to come on today at the end of the game today at Cambridge and have to try and fight for the win and then have to see it out with the set piece at the end and concede a poor set piece at the end where we gave away a poor free-kick and don’t defend it that well, they’ll learn from that. “That’s all part of exposing them to the senior men’s environment. Pre-season’s a good time to do that and that’s been a positive.” “They’re not far away,” he said. “If it was a league game, we probably could have pushed them. They’re all there or thereabouts and we’ll hopefully see at least one or two of them on Tuesday and we’d be hopeful that all of them will travel to Austria for the games next week.” Cameron Humphreys was absent having suffered a concussion at Preston. Due to the related protocols, he is not expected to be available for the matches during the week ahead. Regarding the reports linking skipper Sam Morsy with Saudi Arabian clubs, McKenna said: “I think thankfully Samy put that to bed himself yesterday. He’s our captain, he’s a very important player on and off the pitch. He’s got two years left on his contract and he’s fully bought into the project here, as we all have. There’s not really anything to answer there really.” The Blues are next in action at Luton, which he says is a match viewed in the same way as the game at Preston. “That’s definitely a game we’ve looked and said that that’s going to be a really good marker and a good challenge against a team who have been very successful in the Championship last year, but also the season before that as well,” he said. “We think that will be a good challenge for us. We’re looking forward to the game. They’ll recover their bodies from today and get ready for that one.” Will the line-up against Luton hint at the team which will start against Sunderland on the opening day? “No, to be honest,” he said. “I think there are some players that everyone with an interest could probably guess will play if they’re fit at the start of the season, no big surprises. “But we always plan a little bit for each individual team and we’ve started to look at Sunderland a little bit already, looking at their strengths and what we need to do well against them and where we’ll try to hurt them. “That’s a very different game, they’re a very different opponent to Luton and you’re still managing the training loads and their bodies and making sure that there’s no risk in terms of picking people for Tuesday night, and we have two more games that week as well. “I don’t think it’s at a point yet where we’re picking a team that we’re thinking is going go against Sunderland. Of course, we’ll be trying to get more of the players on the pitch at the same time who we think are likely to start, but we plan to, as we have over the last 18 months, be adaptable game to games in terms of picking players with certain strengths to help us against different oppositions.”
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