The Sky Blues return to league football for the first time in over six months tomorrow afternoon, when they travel to Ashton Gate.
Mark Robins side will come up against Bristol City in their curtain raiser in the Sky Bet Championship and the manager is looking forward to the opening fixture.
“We’re excited, it’s a long time coming.” He said.
“We are over a month from where we normally would’ve been, but we’re all excited. I think it’s going to be a tough fixture but it’s a brilliant one for us to start with.”
Bristol City enter the new season with a new man at the helm, as Dean Holden takes over the reins from Lee Johnson.
The Robins have been in pursuit of a push for promotion for the last few years in the Championship and the Sky Blues boss is anticipating a tough task against Holden’s side this weekend.
“Tell me what an easy game would be at this level?”
“It’s the same every week if you look at the squads. Clubs are paying 4/5 million pounds for players and more and also if the figures are believed players earning upwards of 30/40k a week, it’s just a different world.
“For us it’s not about that it’s about the development side of things and developing our style and obviously the way that we play with the players that we have.”
The Sky Blues head into the weekend on the back of winning promotion to the Championship, along with the League One title.
Due to the global pandemic curtailing the 2019/20 season, City’s campaign ended back in March and up to that point they were unbeaten in 2020 in league action.
Although it’s a great stat to have, Robins isn’t reading too much into that, due to the six-month break in football.
“It’s a nice statistic but obviously we’re going up a level and we’ve got to find our feet.
“I think when we moved up from League Two to League One there was an adjustment period and we grew in confidence and stature throughout that season and then obviously the season afterwards we got the promotion but it’s a different level.
“I think for us, we won’t do anything differently, we’ve just got to do it probably better and quicker but those are things that we have to practice to improve, but in all fairness I think that we’ve got brought some good players and the players that were here last season, there are still a large number of and they’re all raring to go.
“It’s exciting and whilst yes it is a nice stat, we want to continue in the same vein, but clearly there will be challenges for us this year because you’ve got clubs that have huge budgets and have been in the league for a long-long time and on the back of that they’re a lot stronger so I think we’ve got to continue in the same vain and just keep improving and keep doing what we’re doing.”