Boss Mick McCarthy says York City were delighted with Blues midfielder Josh Carson’s form during his loan spell with the League Two club. Town had given the Minstermen permission to keep the 19-year-old for the rest of the season until his campaign was curtailed by a broken metatarsal.
"They were pleased with him, so pleased with him that they wanted to keep him and we’d already given them permission to do that, but sadly he got injured,” McCarthy said.
"The first time he’s got a bit of meaningful football in front of a crowd where points matter unlike in the U21s.”
He says Carson, who made five starts in a month with York, will have recovered in time for pre-season training when the Northern Irishman, like the rest of the squad, should be aiming to win a place in his first team: "That message ought to be intertwined in everybody’s thoughts in pre-season. I don’t need to be going around and saying that.
"My encouragement to the players is always ‘Get in the team’. Prove me wrong if you think you should be in the team.
"If I leave somebody out there’s no point in training badly to show everybody how disappointed they are. What they should do is train better and prove that they should be in the team. I think you find then that the players who do that are the ones that get in the team.
"Josh has got a good attitude to it, it’s just a shame that he’s had his football stopped because of his toe.”
While Carson has been impressing at York, 18-year-old frontman Tom Winter has been doing similarly well with Leiston in the Ryman League Premier Division.
McCarthy is delighted with the second-year scholar’s progress, believing that it will be a good experience for him and says he would welcome other young players making similar moves in the future: "Oh yes, playing against rough-arsed semi-pros who have got a job as well? Tough, it’s a really physical league you’ve got to play in.
"And they all want the points. It’s not about ‘Well, we’ve played and it doesn’t really matter, this is development’.
"The development is winning points and you can’t get any better development than that for me. It's all well them growing up and teaching them, fine, but get to 18, I was in the first team at Barnsley at 18.
"Everybody’s trying to get players in earlier and earlier. It’ll be good for him, like Josh playing at York will be good for him.”