Town manager Gary O’Neil was pleased with his side’s display, despite losing 2-1 to La Liga Osasuna at the JobServe Community Stadium with results not important at this stage of pre-season.

Chuba Akpom levelled for the Blues shortly after half-time, the visitors having taken the lead in the first half, then securing the victory 10 minutes from the end.

“I thought we were good, really,” O’Neil said, following his first game in charge of the Blues in front of fans. “I thought we were the better side. Obviously, a bit of a mistake for the goal, the first goal, but apart from that, 60 minutes, not much our end at all.

“Controlled most of it, created some good chances. Lots that we need to work on still, some stuff that we need to improve, but I’m pretty pleased.

“It’s still a fitness exercise, really. It looked a bit like a team for 60 minutes and then it got really disjointed towards the end.

“But even in the first 60, it was more about trying to get the lads into a good spot. We’ve got two games at the weekend [at Oxford and Wycombe on Saturday] that they need to be ready for.

“So, I was pleased, I thought it went well. I thought the opposition were good as well, which is what you want now.

“We’ve had some games against teams that are are below us, level-wise. This was one where Osasuna are a good side in La Liga and we got to test ourselves and I thought we came out OK.

“Obviously, we lost the game, but that’s by the by at the moment, needing to be ready for the Sunderland game is a bigger picture.”


Asked whether he can see a Gary O’Neil team emerging, he added: “I think so, I think it looked as close as we can probably ask it to look at this stage. There’s some bits that we missed and some bits we didn’t do quite right, but I’m sure I’ll be saying that the whole time I’m here - it’s never going to be perfect.

“But there was some good stuff. I thought the new lads showed some quality as well. Abdul [Fatawu] on the side, exciting. Emersonn showed that he’s going to be a real physical presence running in behind.

“Chuba [Akpom] has been very, very good in pre-season, to be honest, in and around the goal, looks a threat. Jacob Greaves was good again tonight.

“Loads of positives and another positive is that we’re still going to be really busy hopefully between now and Sunderland, but definitely between now and the end of the window to make sure we still strengthen.”

He continued: “I don’t really want to separate new signings from the players that were already here because they’re all new to me, I’ve only known them three weeks, so I’m treating them all the same.

“I was impressed with loads of them, loads of them did well. We know the level that we’re going into, we know we’re going to have to ask a lot of everybody for us to be successful this year.

“And I thought it was good, probably for our first step, really, towards where we are and we put on a decent display. Probably didn’t deserve to lose the game, but we played pretty well, created some chances and gives us something to work from.”

Photo: TWTD