Boss Mick McCarthy has revealed that it was a trip to watch Coventry City in action at Colchester shortly after he took over at Portman Road which dispelled any doubts he had about striker David McGoldrick. The 25-year-old was then on loan with the Sky Blues from Nottingham Forest and joined Town on a similar basis in the January before signing a two-year permanent deal in the summer.
McCarthy said: "I’ve always been impressed with his ability when I’ve seen him but he didn’t play all the time.
"You always tend to think ‘What is wrong with David McGoldrick if he’s got all that ability and he doesn’t play?’.
"He went off to Coventry, we saw his games. Me and TC went to watch him at Colchester one night and he was outstanding.
"We’d been watching him, having him looked at and he was the leading goalscorer in League One. But he was outstanding, he played up front on his own and he worked his socks off, so any doubts I had about him doing that didn’t last very long having seen that and we agreed to do a deal with him then.”
He says other clubs were also in the hunt: "I think we did face a bit of competition. To be fair to Marcus, we gave Dids a good contract, it was a good deal that he did and a good deal that we did.
"When people are saying that we haven’t spent anything, we’ve signed some good players. That was just a good deal.
"I thought there were a few in for him, I remember them telling me that Leeds were in for him, but you never know whether they’re spoofing, trying to get a deal. I’m never quite sure. I’m not bothered, it was just a fantastic deal we did and I think everyone’s seeing that now.”
The Town boss was delighted with McGoldrick's two goals against Brighton on Saturday: "They were excellent. Dids has backed up my assessment on Saturday that a lot of it is down to Terry Connor.
"He’s got great ability, David McGoldrick, but Terry works them constantly, he puts great sessions on and I’ve just read what he said, he does those sessions, beating a couple of mannequins and shooting across the keeper.
"The first one is just a great strike, I know it gets a deflection, but he’s very capable from distance.
"The second one was a great goal because we’d got everybody back in our half defending. There were 10 of us in our half when we won it back and we had two or three passes, it went back to Dean Gerken and it played it up and Murph flicked it on and Dids is one-v-one and he twisted his blood, didn’t he?
"It was a great finish. It’s invaluable to have people like him who can score goals.”