Boss Kieran McKenna believes the Premier League is a very strong division this season with the clubs at the lower end competitive and rarely losing heavily.

The Blues manager, whose team host Crystal Palace at Portman Road on Tuesday, says he hasn’t been too surprised by that given the sides who went up alongside Town in the summer - Southampton and Leicester - and the money being spent elsewhere.

“I felt that coming into this season and people who are wiser than me and have been around the league for longer said that they felt that this would be a really, really strong Premier League this season,” he said. “And I think it's proved to be that.

“I think the teams who have come up, I'd like to think we’re very competitive and have shown we can compete at the level, I think Southampton and Leicester are as well.

“Southampton had a very good performance against Brighton, who are almost at the top of the table, [on Friday, the game ending 1-1], and Leicester have picked up points and are competitive as well.

“Those two teams are, I'd say, not typical newly promoted teams. Leicester were in Europe a couple of seasons ago and Southampton are coming off the back of a decade in the Premier League.

“So that, by nature, would mean that it's going to be a really strong division. The teams who missed out on relegation last season in general invested in their teams, and the middle of the Premier League this summer as well.

“And I think it's a really, really competitive division. I don't watch every game every weekend, I focus on the teams we're playing, but I see all of the teams being really competitive. And I see all the teams throughout the division capable of getting points off other teams.

“We're in that mix as well. We've shown that we can take points off the top teams and we can compete with pretty much everyone. And I think it's making it for a really challenging league, but hopefully an exciting league as well, and it's going to be tight at both ends.”

After all three promoted sides - Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton - were relegated last season, does he feel there is pressure on the Blues, Saints and Foxes to stay up this time around?

“I don't think pressure is the right word,” he reflected. “I think there's probably the least pressure on us, if anything.

“I think our story as a club is already really positive for the pyramid, to have climbed two divisions and showed that even in the Championship you can climb and be really competitive at the top end of that and compete and defeat teams who had parachute payments in the Championship. I think that was a positive for the English pyramid.

“The jump to the Premier League is really big and it seems to be getting bigger and probably from a financial point of view it is getting bigger. So I think it would be seen as a positive if newly promoted teams could come up and compete in the division.

“I'd like to think that we're a lot of people's favourite team in that respect because of the journey that we've had, and I know we've got a lot of support elsewhere. And while that's nice, it doesn't change the challenge every week.

“We're going to give it our absolute all, that's for sure. And that's what we're trying to do and hopefully, we can do it.”

As is referenced on TWTV’s Video Verdict on a weekly basis, a mini-division at the bottom of the division became evident from very early on, but McKenna doesn’t group games together in terms of where teams are in the table.

“We don’t, to be honest,” he said. “In terms of a mini-league, I think that usually happens in the Premier League. With the nature of the division, there’s probably not going to be 10 teams fighting it out at the bottom of the league, there’s going to be a lot smaller number than that.

“A team in our position, we’re probably going to be one of those competing at that end of the division and that’s how we came into the season, knowing that and being ready for that, and that’s the challenge we’re excited to take on, really.

“It’s a different season for us as a club, for the staff, for our group, but it’s an exciting challenge and we feel like we know what that entails.

“In terms of grouping fixtures, we don’t group them in terms of that, we group them in terms of different things and time periods, two home games is a chance to group some fixtures, but not to do with the league table.

“If we did that, we probably would have given up on the Tottenham game away from home, thinking that’s not one we can get points from and we’d all assume we’d win our home game against Leicester, which we could have, but we didn’t.

“A big thing as a team fighting in the bottom half of the table is that you don’t know when your wins are coming and you don’t know when your points are coming. You can’t build up one game any more than any other or get overly disappointed if they don’t come, the win against Leicester at home, for example.

“You can’t ever go into any game, Tottenham away, for example, believing that we’re inferior or we won’t get points in this game.

“We’ve just got to go at 38 games with maximum effort and we’ll get the performances that we get and we get the points that we get and we’ll see what that gives us at the end.”

McKenna has a history of taking little notice of tables and wasn’t even aware that some of the teams above them face one another this week. Leicester, 16th, host 14th-placed West Ham on Tuesday and Wolves, 18th, are away at Everton, who are 15th, on Wednesday.

“I think quite clearly you were telling me things I don't know there,” McKenna said. “I don't know what the other teams’ fixtures are. I've got no interest at this point of the season and probably won't until the very, very end of the season. So, no, it's full focus on us.

“We know there are quite a few teams tight for points down the bottom of the league, but for the sake of a few margins and a few decisions, we could have a few more.

“But we're competing with some really good teams coming from a different place than us. We're going into the game on level points with Crystal Palace. Most people probably would have seen that as a really positive at this stage of the season before the season started. We just have to focus on ourselves, try to perform, and pick up as many points as we can.”

TWTD

bobble added 02:47 - Dec 3 Can feel a big win coming on, 4-1to the bues..delap double
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