Said Gray to the CT: "I feel the pre-season is going really good for me," said the winger who signed for the club from Birmingham City last summer and made an immediate impact before a knee injury threw his season off course.
"It has been hard but I feel really fit now. I have played a few games and felt really strong, so I just can't wait for the season to start now.
"I would like to think I will be part of the manager's plans for the Norwich game. Until the team is announced on Friday no-one will know who will be playing, but I have started a few games and hopefully that is a good indication.
"I will keep pushing and obviously my aim when I came back for the pre-season was to work hard and be in the manager's thinking for the start of the season."
Reflecting on last season, he admits it was a less than ideal first campaign with the Sky Blues, saying: "I think my season was a bit up and down. It started so well with my goal at Barnsley on the opening day and the first four games we were top of the league.
"But I got injured, damaging my medial knee ligament. I was out for a while and then when I came back in the team weren't doing so well and I wasn't fully fit so it took me a few months to get to my best.
"Iain Dowie left and the new manager came in and it was a very frustrating time because it was stop-start for me with my injury."
Although he came in for criticism from some quarters, the player with undoubted talent and terrific skill with the ball at his feet, said: "I don't feel I have got anything to prove to anyone.
"At the end of the day I know that I do the best I can every time I play. Everyone is entitled to their opinion as to what they think is good and not so good, but I just want to play football and hopefully we can do well this season.
"We want to be consistent and playing in a team that is doing well certainly helps because it is hard when a team is not doing so well to stand out.
"But that's the nature of the game we are in and I just want to be playing week in, week out and to the best of my ability on a consistent level."
He added: "When you play wide you rely on other people to give you service whereas other positions are in the mix all the time. But we can't look back, you have to look forward now and that's the way I see things this season. It is all about what we do this year."
And with Chris Coleman appearing to favour a more tried and trusted 4-4-2 formation this season it would appear to suit the natural left winger.
"Players make systems rather than systems making players," he said. "Obviously throughout most of my career I have played 4-4-2 but every manager has got different ideas.
"Last season because of the situation we were in the manager wanted to try different things and maybe it would have worked had we not been in the position we were in.
"But everyone wants to put things right after last season and whether we play 4-4-2 or 4-3-3, I don't think that will have a bearing on things if the team are doing really well because players will make the system work."