Chris Hutchings says he’s never seen anyone quite like midfielder Jay Emmanuel-Thomas. The Blues assistant boss says the summer signing from Arsenal has made significant progress this season but still has plenty to learn.
Asked which other player the 21-year-old reminds him of, Hutchings said he’s one of a kind: "I’ve never seen anyone like him!
"He’s got all the tools but it’s his first season. He’s come from Arsenal who play a totally different way to playing in the Championship and Arsenal have a specific way of playing, a bit like Barcelona.
"He’s had to adjust to that, adjust to where we want him to play, how we want him to play and his workload off the ball.
"At Arsenal, even in the reserves and at youth level, they’ve got great kids and good players at that level and they play when they’re on the ball because they’ve got great quality all around the team.
"Sometimes we have to play off the ball and he’s got to adapt and learn, and credit to him he’s done that and he’s still showing these flashes of genius that he has in his locker.
"We’ve got to get that on a consistent basis. We’re asking a lot of him and he’s asking a lot of himself now and he’s come to the fore. It’s about how consistent can he be.”
Hutchings says he and the rest of the management team are working on the youngster’s tendency to lose concentration: "He’s so unpredictable, he does things at ease and at will, but at times he will switch off, so we have to keep barking at him, ‘Get back in’, ‘Close down there’, do this, do that.
"He probably gets fed up of us shouting at him, to be honest. But we encourage as well. When he does good things, we’re the first to applaud him.”
Hutchings says the £1.5 million signing from the Gunners has got fitter as the season has progressed: "We paid a lot of money for him and we’ll be the first to admit that we didn’t feel he was as fit as what he should have been or what we would have liked
"And he’s worked hard on that and he’s improved. At first I think he was like a greyhound. A greyhound has a race and he’s knackered and he can’t run another one because he doesn’t have the stamina.
"Now he’s got that stamina, he can do it again and again. He can be stronger and the more knowledge he picks up, the more we can help him to become a better player.
"He’s got to keep his feet firmly on the ground and work hard and we’ll be the first to make sure he does that.”
The assistant boss says the Londoner has the potential to show Arsenal that they were wrong to let him move on: "That will be seen in later times. Whether he can do that is down to us to get the best out of him and his desire to see how far he wants to go and how far he wants to bounce back to get to the top, hopefully with this football club.
"He’s still got a lot to learn. He knows that and we know that, but he’s doing OK at the moment.”
Meanwhile, Emmanual-Thomas and other members of the Town squad are taking part in a photo and film shoot in next season's new kit this afternoon. The club will reveal the two new strips in April.