Town Set to Be Unchanged Against Brighton Tuesday, 1st Jan 2013 06:00 Manager Mick McCarthy looks set to name an unchanged side for the sixth game in succession as the Blues complete their holiday Championship fixtures with a home game against Brighton and Hove Albion. The Town boss had praise for his backroom staff who have helped keep his team out on the pitch during the busy Christmas period as well as the players themselves: “We bend them, they mend them. “[Fitness coach] Andy Liddell should be given a mention and I think the players deserve a mention for taking care of themselves. “I’m not talking about staying off the drink or anything like that, but in the rehab, prehab, strengthening, stretching, looking after themselves, keeping themselves fit.” McCarthy admits he has been weighing up whether to make changes with the Seagulls having played less football over the last week, but seems likely to stick with his favoured XI: “I think they’ve been remarkable, the same team for five games. "There’s that dilemma, you think ‘I wonder if they’ll run out of legs?’. Brighton have had a game less, they played Millwall the week before, so they haven’t had the same amount of games. "But then you change it and something goes wrong and you regret it. You keep the same team and they look knackered. At 3pm you’ll see.” The last time Town were unchanged for six games was at the start of 2011/12 during the run which began with the 3-0 home win against Coventry and included the 1-0 away victory at West Ham. The run won't be stretched any further than six with at least some of the loanees unavailable for Saturday's FA Cup tie at Aston Villa. Stephen Henderson is set to continue in goal with Aaron Cresswell and Bradley Orr the full-backs and Tommy Smith and Luke Chambers the centre-halves. In midfield, Andy Drury and Guirane N’Daw will be in the centre with Lee Martin on the left and skipper Carlos Edwards on the right. Up front, DJ Campbell will play the final game of his loan spell before returning to QPR on Thursday alongside Daryl Murphy. The Blues, whose only injury absentee is striker Paul Taylor, who is expected to miss the season having undergone foot surgery, will have to make one change on the bench with Danny Higginbotham having left the club at the end of his loan spell. McCarthy says he has been impressed with what he has seen of Brighton: “They’re a very good side. I watched the game against Watford on our scouting system yesterday. “Watford look a good side, I think both of them have got a chance to be in the play-offs, certainly to be in the promotion push. “I was very impressed with Watford and you can imagine so because they beat Brighton 3-1. But Brighton are a good side. They play differently to us but with similar ethics — they work hard and as a team they look a solid unit. “It’ll be a hard game. They’ve had a game less than us and they put a shift in as well, they work you hard. That might be slightly to their advantage and our disadvantage but we’re on the back of a couple of wins and they got beat, so that evens it up slightly. “I’m not at all surprised they’ve done well over the last two seasons,” he continued. “They’ve got good players and a good manager. They’ve got a fabulous stadium and it’s on the up and it’s a progressive club, it’s no surprise to me at all.” While strikers Campbell and Murphy having been netting regularly, and defenders Cresswell and Smith have scored in the last two games, Town’s midfielders have been on target less frequently. However, the Town manager says he’s not particularly concerned: “I’m not bothered. As long as someone keeps scoring and we keep winning. It’s funny, [the defenders] score, then the next question is ‘Can we have goals from somewhere else?’. “I’m not bothered as long as we keep winning. [The midfielders are] doing their job, supplying the others, keeping the ball out of our net. “It would be lovely if everyone was scoring, but that would be utopia. I congratulate the ones who are. "Cressy, we encourage to get forward and get crosses in, but was I expecting right-footed shots? Not really, so that’s lovely. Let’s progress bit by bit.” Brighton assistant boss and Blues legend Mauricio Taricco says he and boss Gus Poyet believe results will come, their side having drawn three and lost two of their last five games. “We are playing good football but we need a little bit more quality to win the games,” the Argentinian said. “We’ve got it, but we need to show it. “At the moment we aren’t showing the quality to settle games but it’s only a matter of time and we’ll keep plugging away. That’s what you have to do in football. “It’s disappointing when you come away from games that you could have easily got more points from. I can’t think of many games that we have got points and robbed teams. “You can play well and dominate games but to win them is a different matter, you need to show a little bit more quality. “It is all about consistency, every individual has to show consistency. We are not doing that in key areas at the moment and we need to change that in order to go on to better things.” Taricco - who is meeting with Blues fans after the game - recalls his time at Town fondly: "I want them to do well, to be a good team, of course not against us. I had a great time there, my best time as a player, even though I don't show it much. "I am not the type of person who likes to talk about it much or make an issue out of it but I always had a great relationship with the fans. "I am just not the type of person who claps all the time, I just feel it and that's it. Hopefully they know from the way I played. I gave everything when I was there.“ Albion will definitely be without winger Will Buckley, who has a hamstring problem, while full-back Inigo Calderon could be back in the squad after a knee injury. Historically, Town have the upper hand, having won 27 games (24 in the league) between the sides, Brighton 21 (19) and with 13 (12) ending in draws. At the Amex Stadium in October, Brighton sub Will Buckley netted 10 minutes from time to grab a 1-1 draw. The Seagulls had put on the pressure in the second half after Town had gone in front via Daryl Murphy in the first period. Last time at Portman Road, in October 2011, Michael Chopra hit two stunning goals, his first at home for the Blues, and Ibrahima Sonko opened his Town account as Paul Jewell’s men came from behind to beat the Seagulls 3-1. The Blues should have been in front at the break but it was Brighton who scored the game’s first goal via Vicente Rodriguez, before Sonko’s header sandwiched Chopra’s brilliant right-foot strikes. Albion assistant Taricco was with the Blues between September 1994 and November 1998, scoring seven goals in 169 starts and three sub appearances before leaving for Spurs for £1.775 million. Seagulls keeper Tomasz Kuszczak turned down a move to Portman Road to join the Sussex club in the summer. Today’s referee is Fabian Wilnis’s old mate Kevin Friend, who these days is in the Select Group of officials taking control of Premier League games. Leicestershire-based Friend has shown 67 yellow and two red cards in 17 matches so far this season. Friend is best known by Town fans for sending Wilnis off twice in successive years at Plymouth and needlessly booking several more Blues on each occasion. His last Town game was the 2-0 victory over Millwall at Portman Road in October 2010 in which he booked only one visiting player. Squad from: Henderson, Loach, Lee-Barrett, Orr, Hewitt, Cresswell, Mings, Chambers, Smith, N’Daw, Drury, Hyam, Reo-Coker, Edwards, Carson, Emmanuel-Thomas, Martin, Murphy, Campbell, Chopra, Scotland.
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