Blues boss Kieran McKenna has stressed the importance of planning ahead as Town go into a busy period of fixtures.

Between now and the game at Stoke City on New Year’s Day, the Blues travel to Middlesbrough on Saturday, Watford on Tuesday, then host Norwich City in the big East Anglian derby the following weekend.

They travel to third-placed Leeds on December 23rd before welcoming leaders Leicester on Boxing Day and then QPR three days later.
 
“It is a phase where it becomes really important,” McKenna said when asked about managing players’ game time during the upcoming period.

“I think in two weeks' time, we have Leeds, Leicester, QPR and Stoke in maybe a 10-day period, so when you are going into blocks like that, it is true that you have to plan a little bit ahead and it is extremely unlikely that you are going to pick the same team for each game. 
 
“And there is an opportunity and sometimes a need to look at each opposition, develop a game plan for each game and choose the players who are most suitable for that game plan and plan a little bit ahead. 
 
“So there is an element of that that comes into the thinking, but at the same time we know each game is such a challenge. Each of those games is so difficult that we cannot, as a playing group or as a staff as well, allow our minds to drift too far past the game ahead.

“We need to prepare a team with full focus to go and be ready for that game and keep one very small percent of our mind on the next one coming up and what that one might look like.”

He added: “There's a balance to be found between using your training time well on weeks like this because I think this was maybe our first training week since pre-season with the whole squad available that's not been an international week, but also knowing that we're already a few months into a really big season so keeping enough freshness in the group as well.

“And that's going to be important over the next few weeks. Certainly we're going to have to utilise the squad, we're certainly not going to have the same starting 11 in every game, we're going to have to pick what we think is the right team for each game and prepare a little bit ahead in some situations and utilise the group that we have here. 
 
“But we've got a good group, everybody knows their jobs, everybody's fully committed to what we're trying to do and for phases like this why we've kept a lot of players in the building who are all part of the journey, so hopefully we'll see the benefits of that over the next month.”

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