Boss Roy Keane says it’s not only hard to make his first XI at the moment but there’s also stiff competition for places on the bench. The Town manager says the younger players are making it difficult for more senior players like Mark Kennedy and Darren O’Dea to make the matchday 18 on their return from injury.
Keane is pleased his squad are giving him this particular headache: "It’s the toughest I’ve had it in terms of picking my starting XI and not just that, the bench. These lads are coming back and they want to be involved, everyone wants to be involved, which is good.
"Credit to the younger boys, they’re not going to make it easy for the other lads, and I wouldn’t expect them to. When I was a younger player I wanted to get involved.”
The Irishman says he has been impressed with the youngsters’ attitudes: "I take my hat off to the younger players. They all seem to have good heads on them. I’ve not seen any player getting carried away, whether that’s Luke, Tom Eastman, even Reggie had a sniff.
"They’ve all had an opportunity and they’ve all taken it well and they’ve all handled themselves well when I have left them out.
"Shane O’Connor’s another young boy who is chomping at the bit to get involved, Conor Hourihane too, Troy Brown has trained as well as anyone. Andros Townsend is outstanding in training. It’s good, there’s a lot of competition there.”
Holding midfielder Luke Hyam played at the centre of the defence in the recent 2-2 reserves draw at Stevenage, showing the type of versatility which Keane says will be useful in his career: "I think any decent player, particularly if they want to play in the middle of the park, should be able to play as a centre-half. Luke did quite well down there.
"It’s about Luke learning his trade. Tom Eastman and Tommy Smith are playing at full-back and they’re centre-halves. That’s the challenge of being a player. Good players will adapt.”
The Town boss says he has been pleased with his side’s development since last year’s long-awaited first victory of the season against tonight’s opponents Derby: "The players are mentally tougher than they were last year, but I think there’s a bit more confidence because we’ve got a few victories under our belts
"Looking back at last year, we played Derby after 15 games and we hadn’t won and mentally that can play on players’ minds.”
Keane says he will be happy if the team has made similar progress again in a year’s time: "I think we’ve moved on, we’re stronger now, we know where we’re at, but we need to remind people that we’ve got a long way to go before we’re a top team. But there is progress being made, as you’d hope.
"Even when we had a bad week, the spirit was really good amongst the players and I always felt we’d get things sorted. A lot of teams get in the top six, what you have to do is stay there. That’s the big challenge I put to the players — can you stay there?”