Luke Varney is excited to have joined the Blues and is determined to make the most of his loan spell at Portman Road.

Varney, 32, worked as a quality controller in a fabrics factory before moving from non-league Quorn in his native Leicestershire to join Crewe Alexandra in 2003.

Since then the former Midland Alliance top scorer has moved to Charlton, Derby, Sheffield Wednesday (loan), Blackpool (loan), Portsmouth, Leeds and Blackburn, from whom he has been snapped up on loan by Mick McCarthy.

Varney, who made his debut as a late substitute in Saturday’s 1-0 home defeat by Reading, is hoping for another opportunity to show what he can do when Birmingham are the visitors to Portman Road this evening.

He said: “I’ve been really looking forward to this move. It’s three months and a massive challenge that I’m well excited about. I can give it everything I’ve got. I feel fresh and the lads must feel tired.

“The Championship is a tough league and I’ve done it year in, year out for a while. I feel like it’s pre-season for me and I’m really ready to hit the ground running. Yes, it’s a short spell but I’m going to give it everything I’ve got.

“I enjoyed Saturday, even though it was only 15 minutes, just to get a bit of the ball. I can see I am going to get chances and hopefully create a few for the lads as well.

“I have always enjoyed playing here throughout my career. I think we all have our grounds where we enjoy playing and I’ve been quite successful here, scoring a couple of goals. The last time I played here I scored so hopefully I can start doing it in an Ipswich shirt.”

Varney was deemed surplus to requirements by Blackburn, where he faced fierce competition for a place in the starting line-up from Rudy Gestede, Jordan Rhodes, Josh King and Chris Brown and failed to find the net in 11 league appearances, all as a substitute, this season.

He added: “I haven’t played a lot of football recently. I got 15 minutes in the FA Cup game against Stoke but after speaking to Mick the main reason I came here was to get a few minutes and help out as much as I possibly can.

“I must admit it has been tough to back players up, especially at Blackburn where they have some good strikers, fantastic players who have scored a lot of goals, but I’ll have to bide my time.

“The other managers I spoke to did promise me football but you never know really, do you?

“Mick was dead honest with me and said I would play a part, whether it is off the bench, and just to be involved again and to have that competitiveness that I’ve always wanted is important to me.

“It’s a great position we are in and we’ve talked about the amount of wins we might need, although we’ve not spoken about specific games.

“I quite like that Mick’s like that. He just wants to move on to the next one and it’s a no-nonsense approach.

“We know what we need to do and while we’re disappointed about Saturday we’ve moved on quickly.

“We had enough chances to win the game and enough possession but Reading played a counter-attacking game and caught us with one long shot, which was a great goal. Now we’re looking forward to putting it right with a win against Birmingham.”

Photo: Action Images

Suffolk_n_Good added 06:33 - Feb 24 And training facilities not mentioned once?!?! 😂😂😂
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JCBLUE added 07:14 - Feb 24 May the force be with you Luke .........
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Razor added 10:24 - Feb 24 Sounds keen and up for it so PLAY HIM!
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parkinshair added 14:19 - Feb 24 For the limited time Varney was on the pitch he was the kind of pain in the ar@e to Reading that we could have done with sooner.
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