Blues boss Roy Keane says Hungarian striker Tamás Priskin is making it hard for him to leave him out of his Town side after his recent good run of form. The £1.7 million signing from Watford scored his fifth goal of the season at Sheffield United on Saturday.
Keane says he’s delighted that the 24-year-old has finally started to live up to his potential after his disappointing first year with the club: "Tamás is making it very hard for me to leave him out, as much as I have no problem changing winning teams, there are certain players who are saying ‘don’t leave me out’, and Tamás is one of them.
"His workrate’s been very, very good over the last few weeks and he’s been getting his rewards with some of the goals he’s been getting.
"His general play’s been very good and I think the fans are getting behind him and have been very supportive of him in recent weeks.”
The Town manager says all frontmen benefit from scoring: "Particularly with attacking players, even the big-name strikers, they just need that bit of confidence of a few goals. We’ve seen that with Tamás and long may it continue.
"If he keeps up his current goals ratio, then he’ll be well into double figures, and that’s all we ask of our strikers. For the club to make progress we have to have players getting double figures.
"Last year our leading scorer was Jon Walters with eight and two of those were penalties. It goes to show that as much as we gave bad goals away, we didn’t score many.
"But this season we have Tamás and Jason contributing, I think our midfielders will score goals for us, as will young Connor Wickham.”
Keane recently rested Trinidadian striker Jason Scotland in the second half at Nottingham Forest, but says the former Swansea and Wigan man’s fitness has progressed since then: "I think he’s fitter now, so there’ll be no rest for anybody. They had a good rest in the summer.”
Meanwhile, West Brom striker Ishmael Miller says he’d favour a move out on loan to get to match fitness after a thigh injury: "It's my view that I need to go somewhere just to get some football and play some games on the trot so that I can be ready for West Brom. I know it's going to be really tough for me to play unless I am fully fit."
Town are amongst a number of clubs to be linked with the former Manchester City man, although Roy Keane felt that the Blues would face significant competition for his signature.
Elsewhere, ex-Town striker Jordan Rhodes has been called to the Scotland U21 squad for the first time. Rhodes was born in Oldham but qualifies for Scotland having been schooled there for five years during his father Andy’s time in Scottish football.