OXFORD United have done as much as possible to get the club ready for the kick-off of the Sky Bet Championship season, says head coach Des Buckingham.
The U’s host Norwich City this afternoon, in what will be the team’s first game in the second tier for more than 25 years.
It’s the first game in a 46-match campaign in which United have been tagged as relegation favourites by bookmakers and rival fans alike.
The U’s though will hope to cause an upset, starting with the Canaries clash this afternoon.
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Buckingham said: “We’re going into a level of football that this football club hasn’t been at for a long time.
“We’ve done as much as we possibly can since that full-time whistle went at Wembley, both on the field and off it, to be as best prepared as we can.
“We’re as much as we can be ready. There are still things we want to do on and off the pitch, but it can’t all happen overnight.
“I’m really happy with the progress that we’ve made in the five or six weeks that we’ve had going into Saturday, and I’m so excited for what’s to come.”
He added: “It’s going to be an exciting season. There are a lot of challenges that will come our way.
“We’ve become used to being one of the better teams in League One, and we’re now in a Championship pretty much full of ex-Premier League teams, and good ones at that.
“We won’t shy away from that. We will try and play our game, and do what we can.
“It’s probably fair to say we’re not going to win as many as we did last year, but we will certainly give it a good go.”
The Canaries sold star player Gabriel Sara to Galatasaray for £20 million last week, while England Under-21 winger Jonathan Rowe has been linked with a £7m move to Leeds United.
Those figures highlight the step up that United are making this season.
Buckingham said: “They’ve got quality all over the pitch, and if you look at the money that some of them are being touted around for in the transfer market, it shows a significant difference to what we may have faced in League One.
“They’ve got quality all across the pitch, and regardless of what they have on the field on Saturday, we need to be ready, and we are ready for that.”
He added: “You can prepare as much as you can, and it’s the same with us. They’ll be looking at what we’ve done and how we’ve done it.
“The biggest thing for us, and I’ve said it since I walked in the building, we’ll spend as much time on the controllables that we have.
“We’ll pay them the respect that they fully deserve, but we don’t have a full picture and we can’t 100 per cent say ‘they will do this’, so we need to make sure we’ve planned for a couple of eventualities that may come about.”