Boss Mick McCarthy says right-back Elliott Hewitt fully deserves to be making his first league start for the Blues at Peterborough this afternoon. The 18-year-old Wales U21 international replaces Richard Stearman, who is suspended after receiving a harsh second yellow card at Nottingham Forest on Tuesday.
Hewitt joined the Blues from Macclesfield for an initial fee of £250,000 last summer but was unable to play for the first few months of his time at Portman Road having undergone two hip impingement operations while still with the Silkmen.
He made his debut as a sub in the 3-0 home victory over Millwall in December with his only start so far having come in the FA Cup defeat at Aston Villa in January.
McCarthy says Hewitt is now full recovered from his surgery: "He’s fine now, he’s all over his injuries. He’s had to sit and watch Bradley Orr doing it and Richard Stearman doing it, who has been excellent, I might add.
"He can sit on the bench and watch and learn a little bit and he’s trained very, very well, so he deserves his chance.”
He says the young Welshman is a likeable character off the field: "He’s a nice young fella, I hope he’s a good player tomorrow, whatever else he brings. He is, I’m not putting him in and hoping.
"I watch him in training all the time. He can defend, he’s very, very quick and athletic and he’s got really good qualities.
"He went on with nine men on the pitch the other night and he dinked it over the full-back’s head, ran him and put a great ball in. But for the fact that it went just over somebody’s head and it just hit Frank Nouble as he was running in, it could have been a great bit of football which created the equaliser.”
McCarthy is glad to be welcoming back striker David McGoldrick, who was unavailable against his parent club, particularly with Michael Chopra out injured having suffered a dead leg: "They’ve both been doing very well for us. I thought Chops was great the other night. He went and played wide left and he was excellent, and has been.
"It’s sad that he’s missing, but maybe as he’d done 70 minutes, lots of it while down to 10 men and then nine, maybe it’s positive we’ve got fresh legs in the team. But it’s sad that Chops is injured.”
Regarding Stearman’s second yellow card, McCarthy says the refereeing authorities have admitted the decision made after Andy Reid seemed to run into the on-loan Wolves man was incorrect: "It is harsh and it’s wrong because I’ve spoken to the referee’s assessors and they were going mad about it. It was just bonkers.
"The story was that [the assessor had] seen a missed call from me and he said ‘We’ve had a missed call from Ipswich’. And someone said ‘I bet you have, have you seen that red card yet?’.
"They saw it and they’ve admitted that it was daft, that it was wrong. It’s cold comfort, I can’t even appeal against it because it was a second yellow.”
Meanwhile, McCarthy says trialists Ade Yusuff and Mawete 'Jordy' Nkunga, who have been with the Blues from the Tresham Academy and played for the U21s against Colchester and QPR, will be returning to the club for a further trial spell.