DAVID Hopkin today asked for patience from fans as he looks to stamp his own mark on City and declared: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

The Scot aims to get really stuck in to his squad this week to build the platform for the “high-intensity” style of play that he wants.

And he hopes the Valley Parade faithful will start to see a difference in his first home game against Charlton this weekend.

Hopkin said: “It’s always important you try and bed in how you want to play and the principles. You need to make a structure to play from.

“Fans watching on Saturday maybe saw the team looking a bit more organised and harder to beat.

“Anyone going into any club, no matter how you want to play, has to get that structure in place so that players have something to fall back on.

“You don’t want to overload players when you first come in.

“It has to be about the team first. As weeks go on, we’ll start working on things individually and a bit more expansively.

“The main thing now is building a foundation that everybody knows.

“But the fans need to be patient. It’s going to take a wee bit of time because we have got a few injuries.

“The players who are selected need to make sure they handle the magnificent atmosphere at Valley Parade.

“And I’d ask the fans to give us full backing whoever plays, whether they are older players or younger ones, because that’s what we’ll need over next six to eight weeks until we get everybody back fit.”

City are assessing the fitness of skipper Josh Wright (hamstring), Luca Colville (knee) and Kelvin Mellor (hamstring). Hopkin is already facing the lengthy absence of Hope Akpan and Adam Chicksen.

He added: “Hopefully the other ones won’t be too bad. Maybe it was just the intensity of the game and the hard work we had to put in.

“Sometimes you just pull a muscle, whether it’s a groin, hamstring or a calf. But we’ll see where we go from there.”

Blackpool’s late flurry denied Hopkin an opening win as head coach but he was encouraged with a lot of what he saw.

“We only had three sessions before the game on Saturday but I think everything we’d done was working.

“It was never going to be perfect – Rome’s not built in a day.

“If Blackpool had cut us open and scored three then I’d have been worried. But it’s just individual errors from boys who were magnificent up to that stage.”

Keeper Richard O’Donnell held up his hand for the mistake which led to Blackpool’s winner but Hopkin has exonerated him from any blame.

“I thought Richard was incredible,” he said. “He’d done everything I’d asked of him.

“His distribution was first class and some of the saves he made were magnificent. I can’t fault him.

“A goalkeeper makes an error and it’s usually a goal. Everyone else on the pitch makes one and you can recover.”

Hopkin has already seen a difference in the attitude of the squad since his arrival as they adapt to a different approach to that of predecessor Michael Collins.

“Maybe the way they played under Michael was more possession-based football. Everyone has their own prerogative.

“My teams are high intensity and we need to work.

“Our team has got to keep going to that 90th minute. In the circumstances with Josh and Luca coming off, that took the strongest part of our team away.

“Now it’s about pushing on and keeping that intensity work up so the players get up to the speed that I want to work at.”