Town boss Mick McCarthy agrees with fans who believe the Blues have as good a quartet of strikers as anyone in the Championship.

Last season’s 27-goal Championship top scorer Daryl Murphy is likely to be partnered by David McGoldrick at Brentford on Saturday with Freddie Sears - who netted nine times for the Blues and 14 for his previous club Colchester last season - and summer signing Brett Pitman - who notched 14 for Bournemouth in 2014/15 - likely to be on the bench.

“I’d agree with them,” concurred McCarthy. “I’d be crazy if I didn’t. I think I’ve got four of the best. My difficulty is going to be leaving them out, that’ll be the difficult part.

“I think the difficult part for them will be that there will be two of them playing and two will be on the bench, and whoever goes on first somebody will be thinking they’re the third choice striker or fourth choice striker.

“It’s up to them to get in the team. That’s great, healthy competition. And, of course, there will be times when I play 4-3-3 and three of them will play.”

He says they’re the right type of people to deal with the situation of having spells out of the side: “Absolutely, they’re good characters, good people. They’ve got to keep themselves right and train properly and be prepared when they’re called upon.

“And they will do because if they don’t they don’t do themselves justice. What they’ve got to do for me is to do better than the one who is left out, injured or suspended or for whatever reason is not in.

“To go in and impress and make sure they give me the problem that I’ve either got to pick him or make it hard for me to leave him out.”

He dismisses the suggestion that the addition of on-loan wingers Ryan Fraser and Ainsley Maitland-Niles means the Blues will be more attacking in the season ahead.

“I think we’ve always been attacking,” he insisted. “We’ve certainly not been a sit back and defend team, that’s for sure. I’ve tried to improve the squad, month on month, year on year, season on season and hopefully we’ve done that.

“I tried last year, we had Cameron Stewart and Alex Henshall, I thought they might bring a bit of pace and craft and guile to the wings. That didn’t happen for whatever reason.

“We’ve got Ryan Fraser and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, and Larsen Touré, who just really continues to impress in training.”

While the Blues seem certain to line-up with a four-man midfield and two strikers at Griffin Park, McCarthy says the squad gives him the flexibility to move to 4-3-3 if required.

“We had to do it last year, sometimes because I wanted to do it,“ the Town manager recalled. “We had a spell when we went to Wigan and played 4-3-3, thinking they’d be playing that and they actually played 3-5-2 and changed it to 4-3-3.

“It suited us playing 4-3-3 and we had a good spell at that with Murph, Didz and Conor Sammon playing in the team, we had a bit of success. We’re fairly adaptable, but we’ve got to be.”

Photo: Action Images

hoppy added 06:48 - Aug 7 If teams have to face us starting with Murphy and McGoldrick, they're certainly not going to like it that we've got Sears and Pitman to come off the bench! So much better with those options than we started off last season, where it was probably us that were more scared that we'd got Nouble to come on...
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Europablue added 06:50 - Aug 7 No offense to Conor Sammon and the like, but I'm much more confident with our strike force this year. Sometimes I'd have to be really hopeful that we might get something out of the match. We relied a lot on the defenders to get the goals at the start of last season, then only on Murphy for the rest of season. We have much better balance now. Hopefully when the star striker(s) form takes a dip we will just switch the players rather than just slide down the table.

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VulpineBlue added 07:19 - Aug 7 Good to have quality strikers on the bench to bring on as opposition defences tire. Hopefully this means that we will be able to turn more games to our favour closer to full time, maybe not against the Derbys and Burnleys, but against the less competitive teams where we dropped points last season.
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karls_dad added 07:52 - Aug 7 I would have liked Murph and Pitman to start, if those two can,t score we may as well hang our boots up!! A deadly partnership for sure!
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Jimmy86 added 08:12 - Aug 7 Didz should be on the bench in my opinion and Sears should start with Murphy. Keep that partnership going from the tail end of last season. I'd play 4 2 3 1 with skuse and Douglas in front of the back 4, Murphy up top with didz, bish, sears, AMN, and fraser fighting it out for 3 places behind murph
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peewee added 09:18 - Aug 7 I'd like to mcgoldrick play cam as he can strike for outside the box and hold the ball up with the new midfield and bish in the mix I have a great feeling about this season with Murphy and and sears and tbc how good the other strikers are over a season. Still think even with money we wouldn't get a easy this is the championship.
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BlueKush added 09:45 - Aug 7 What's wrong with playing 433 every game? We matched Norwich in a 433 last season and played like frightened hens against them in a 442. 433 yielded our best performances and results of the season - and that was with Connor Sammon. You can't seriously drop Sears. And if Maitland-Niles or Fraser miss any games we're suddenly looking slightly ropey, their replacements at the moment would be Jay Tabb and Teddy Bishop (out of position). The other wingers (Stewart, Henshall, Toure, Connelly) are nowhere near the first XI. Even against Utrecht, in the 442 we were chasing shadows whilst when we switched to 433 we dominated. So harsh on Sears as well. Baffling.

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hoppy added 10:03 - Aug 7 Seeing the different opinions here on who should start just goes to show how many good options we now have - and what good squad building and business Mick has done, and again, without really spending a lot of the cash we've brought in for Mings. Let's put Brentford to the sword tomorrow - be nice if all 4 strikers could get on the scoresheet too, oh, and Douglas, or am I just being greedy? COYB

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joechil16 added 11:07 - Aug 7 I still believe we should play a 4-1-2-1-2, with the obvious back 4 skuse holding with bishops and bru in front then have mcgoldrick playing behind Murphy and Sears gives us little width but we could play some great football with that team!
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battyblue added 12:56 - Aug 7 mcgoldrick ahead of sears crazy and back to defensive 442 formation and Mick to say we were an attacking team last season and didn't sit back and defend is absolute rubbish.
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Garv added 13:06 - Aug 7 Murphy and Sears for me. They already have a partnership, and McGoldrick has barely played since February. Right now Pitman appears to be fourth choice simply because he is the newbie, but Mick may well see it differently.
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Seasider added 17:17 - Aug 7 Looks like Mick still favours his 442 but may change it if opposition over running us. Unusual for Mick to be so specific about his formations,lets hope he is kidding as think we have played better with 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1. Think we have players now to adapt,and if Mick played different way this would keep opposition managers guessing. Perhaps a bit of squad rotation like Claudio,to keep players fresh for later in season as second half not so good as first last year bearing in mind we were top on boxing day.

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oldegold added 20:31 - Aug 7 As we have attacking quality it is in our interests to play an attacking game so let's hope he goes for it. This league favors the brave as history shows and our best performances last season were when we played for a win right from the off without the usual dull and sterile stuff. come on..we have the players so let's do it
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Bergholtblue added 10:19 - Aug 8 MM not going to give anything away in an interview is he? Wait until kick off and then start moaning about his selection and whether we should play 4 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 or 3 1 2 1 4 or whatever you prefer.
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