The Town squad travels to Germany for their second pre-season camp today with the Blues facing Bundesliga sides Borussia Mönchengladbach and Hoffenheim in friendlies on Friday and Saturday.

The squad will be based in the Munich area around an hour from each game with the first friendly against Borussia on Friday at the ATS Sportpark in Heimstetten (KO 2.30pm CET, 1.30pm BST).

On Saturday, the Blues take on Die Kraichgauer at the Kufstein Arena on the border of Austria and Germany, (KO 1.30pm CET, 12.30pm BST).

The short trip is the second of the summer, the squad having spent a week at Sportzentrum Landskron in Villach, Austria, concluding with a 1-0 victory over Ukrainian champions Shakhtar Donetsk in their first public friendly of the summer.

Speaking on Saturday following the 2-1 defeat to another Bundesliga side, Fortuna Düsseldorf, Blues boss Kieran McKenna was hoping to added to his squad before the trip, however, no new additions have been made.

Blackburn’s Sammie Szmodics seemed the most likely but that deal continues to rumble on, despite expectations that last year’s 27-goal Championship top scorer will eventually be confirmed as a Town player.

“I think we all really enjoyed the first one,” McKenna said regarding the Austria trip. “Every part of it, the training, the off-the-pitch and the game as well, so it’s good to have another one again.

“It’s important for the group and we’d like to have maybe a bigger group or more players in that we can integrate, so let’s hope that there could be some movement before we travel on Wednesday.

“But other than that it’s going to be great to go away with these boys again, with the boys that we have brought in and continue to get stronger on and off the pitch, so we’re looking forward to it.”

McKenna ideally would like to field two different senior teams in each match but with a number of players sidelined - although Omari Hutchinson posted that he had returned to training after a minor niggle on social media yesterday - says he may not be able to do so.

“We hope so because the games are pretty close apart,” he added. “But we don’t have the bodies for that in terms of senior players at the moment, so we’re going to have to have a look at it and try and find the right balance between stretching and pushing the boys with minutes but not over-pushing them. In an ideal scenario we’d have two separate XIs to play the games.”

Youngsters Finley Barbrook and Leon Ayinde are again likely to be involved having been with the squad throughout pre-season up to now.

Elsewhere, former Blues midfielder Jon Nolan, 32, is on trial back at Shrewsbury, the club he left to move to Town from in the summer of 2018 in a joint-deal along with Toto Nsiala.

Nsiala, also 32, rejoined the Shrews, who are once again managed by former Blues boss Paul Hurst, earlier in the summer.

Photo: ITFC

victorysquad added 10:56 - Jul 31 It must be hugely frustrating for the manager, but i feel we just need to be patient and we will get the right players. If we start paying over the odds, every transfer deal will get even harder
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