Town U18s coach Russell Osman says Academy left-back Joe Whight needs to have greater belief in his own abilities. The 17-year-old, who signed a two-year professional contract with the Blues in the summer, was one of the star performers as the Town youngsters beat Leeds United 2-0 on Tuesday to progress to the fourth round of the FA Youth Cup.
Osman said: "I keep telling Joe what a good player he is. I think the only person that doesn’t believe it is Joe himself sometimes.
"I think it’s a little bit of that Suffolk upbringing. He’s a terrific lad, a great lad and I think if we all keep telling him he’s a really good player then one day he might start believing us.”
Whight, who manager Paul Jewell tried to send out on loan prior to the recent deadline to give the former Copleston High School pupil first team experience, played at the centre of the defence against Leeds, rather than his more usual left-back position.
Osman, no mean centre-half in his playing days, was impressed: "He was very good, he’s a tough lad, he’s brave, he’s got a lovely left foot and he had a bit of determination in him, which was nice to see.
"He wasn’t going to get beaten in the air, he wasn’t going to lose balls down the line and he was up to the physical side. All the staff rate him highly. He’s been at the club a long time and we’ve got a few of his era.”
The one-time England international says Whight's contemporaries in the second year of their scholarships need to be showing the club’s senior management that they are worth professional contracts: "I thought Aaron Jones did very well [against Leeds], Callum Bennett had a quiet game in front of him but he was effective and covered a lot of ground.
"Those second-year boys have come up together and have just got to keep proving it week-in, week-out. That’s the difficulty of being in the second year, you haven’t got time to rest on your laurels. They’ve now got to go into the next game away at Norwich on Saturday.
"They’ve got to prove themselves on Monday and then on Tuesday and on Wednesday and so on. I know what they can do, they need to show the manager what they can do and they can only do that by doing in it week-in, week-out, day after day.”
Meanwhile, ex-Blue Steve Palmer has rejoined Watford as the Hornets' Academy recruitment manager.