Ahead of Thursday night’s trip to Port Vale, Brian Barry-Murphy spoke to the press at CCS.
Following Saturday’s season-opening victory over Peterborough United and the loan signing of goalkeeper Nathan Trott, Brian reflected on recent developments both on and off the pitch in the Welsh capital.
“We have positions where we want to improve within the squad, and Nathan fits in perfectly with that,” he began. “To finally get him into the Club is testament to the work everybody behind the scenes has done and I’m very grateful. He’s training with us and he’s good to go.
“It’s always a unique occasion with the build-up to the first game of the season. It’s about four or five weeks, so there is a lot of emotion packed into 98 minutes or so.
“To get that first game out of the way gives you a feeling of what the stadium can be like, and you hope to replicate that as much as possible.”
Turning his attention towards our first away fixture of the campaign, the boss is anticipating a different test when City travel to face the Valiants.
“From a professional point of view, our focus is now purely on today’s training and then looking at tomorrow’s game,” he continued. “It’s the only way that we can work from our perspective.
“I think it will be a different challenge. We’ve only been away to Notts County in pre-season really where we had the feeling of playing in a different environment against a home team with their supporters.
“Port Vale are obviously coming off the back of a hugely successful campaign last season, probably the opposite of ourselves, so that challenge in itself for our young squad will be really important to understand what we’re going to face.
“It’s a different test to what we had on Saturday, which is the most exciting thing for me to see how we can cope with that and try to overcome it.”
Focusing on the development of the squad as the season progresses is also a key factor, as Brian explained: “I think that part of the excitement of the team we have moving forward is that opportunity to see them grow and see how they deal with different challenges.
“The perception from the outside and how we’re viewed by the opposition is almost irrelevant to us, as we have to have a laser focus on our own way of working; training and playing our own way, and then everything else almost pales in significance.”
Barry-Murphy concluded with an injury update, adding: “Perry [Ng] is still two to three weeks away, and Alex Robertson is on a similar timescale with his return from injury. The first game takes a lot out of different players for different reasons. I think there were a few who were stiff and sore on Sunday and Monday but we have a clean bill of health for Thursday.”
Watch more from Brian and Calum Chambers on Cardiff City TV!