Opinion: Initial signs from Blues pre-season are promising, but maintaining it will be important

Slowly making progress.

Let’s just hope that this isn’t just another false hope and we can carry it into the regular season now.

I said a few weeks ago that the club’s choice of pre-season games was going to be an interesting one, and something that would put us in good stead heading into the season, and whilst you can’t read too much from a result like this against Leicester City, the sounds coming out of Wast Hills seem to be positive ones.

And it must be said, so does some of the footage.

The fact that we’ve been able to keep a side that finished 5^th in the Premier League last season at within arm’s reach, and not exactly a weak side either, with plenty of big-name players available for the Foxes shows that even in such a short space of time Aitor Karanka is working his magic on this side.

And it’s good to see that the defence have managed to sort themselves out as well, something that was his speciality at Middlesbrough, leading them to back to back seasons where they conceded the most of anyone in the league.

We have an arguably bigger test coming up this weekend as we play Tottenham Hotspur, before we round things off against Walsall which should act as a perfect pick me up (a ‘tune-up game’ to put it in terms from The Longest Yard) before the competitive stuff starts against Cambridge United.

But from what I’ve seen and heard so far, I see no reason why we won’t see progress this campaign. It might not be much, but if we can continue to hold our own against Premier League sides, then that should hopefully carry on into the Championship.