Town boss Kieran McKenna says the international break was used in part to give the players a rest after a busy spell of fixtures, while it also gave him and his staff a rare opportunity to work with them on the training ground over a period of days.

Most of the squad went away, a number of them to Dubai, where McKenna also spent time during the break and the Blues manager says having some downtime was important.

“Definitely. We came off the back of a period of six games in 18 days, I think, so we used the early part of the week to train hard because there's a certain stimulus physically that you don't get in games that you can get in training,” he said.

“We worked hard in the early part of the week and then it's the first time in the season really we've been able to have a little bit more extended period of days off. 

“The players were free. Some saw family, some went away and everyone's come back really fresh and in a really good place.

“The atmosphere and the energy around the training ground this week have been really good, and everyone's excited now to get started again.”

He added: “We've obviously tried to use the time as well as possible. So we trained well in the early part of last week and, I feel, we've trained really well this week, and trained really hard and tried to use the period. 

“Although we've not had the whole group here we’ve tried to use the period to speak about things and work on things that are going to be relevant.

“Not just for West Brom coming up, but for the next block of games, really, because we know that once the December games start coming, there's not that much training time.

“So we've used the training time as well as we could with the group of players that have been here.

“Beyond that, our planning. When you have a really busy run of fixtures, there's an element of you that might look a game ahead in terms of selections and who might suit different oppositions and different game plans and different types of games.

“I think that's a natural process, but certainly, the last couple of days has been a really good focus on West Brom and a really big game coming up.”

Photo: TWTD

MK1 added 17:55 - Nov 23 As it turns out, the break came at exactly the right time. Refresh and go again. Great for them to have time away and some quality time with families. We go again.
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765765 added 21:44 - Nov 23 Find that really interesting that the immediate period of the break was actually intense training not just straight into a rest and time off. That performance team are so important, the athletic standards of the squad are just light years from where it was before
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