Blackburn visit Portman Road this evening with two ex-Blues strikers in their ranks, Jordan Rhodes and DJ Campbell. Manager Mick McCarthy says he rates Rhodes highly as a goalscorer, while he expects 32-year-old Campbell, who netted 10 goals in a 17-game loan spell with Town last season, to be looking forward to a return to Suffolk.
"DJ was great here,” McCarthy said. "The circumstances that brought him here, he was out of the team [at QPR] and he lit the place up with his goals.
"We weren’t going to take him [permanently], we weren’t in that ballpark, to be fair, but Blackburn have taken him and have been able to pay him his just desserts for what he was doing here.
"Strikers do that. They get their nose pushed out of joint but everybody’s always looking for a goalscorer.
"So, if somebody finds a rich vein of form for whatever reason - they come to a different club, they start getting goals and resurrect themselves - there’s always somebody looking out for goalscorers.
"He’s been suspended, he got sent off up at Blackpool, and I think Saturday was his first game back, so he’ll be relishing the thought of coming here.”
McCarthy says 23-year-old Rhodes, who is back at Portman Road for the first time, has the Midas touch in front of goal, having netted 33 goals for Rovers and Scotland last season and 10 so far this campaign.
"He’s a goalscorer, he was the top goalscorer last season,” he said. "We were arguing whether he scored the one against us [at Ewood Park last season] but he did, of course, he got a touch on it.
"He’s prolific. He might not have a kick in the game but he’ll get a goal out of it, which is always nice to have for any team.”
Regarding former boss Roy Keane’s controversial decision to sell him to Huddersfield in 2009, he says he’s not able to comment: "I don’t know the circumstances of that.
"You tell me, was he anywhere near as prolific or doing as he is now? Would anybody have envisaged him being what he is today?”
Having been unable to keep Campbell, who is yet to score for Rovers, at Portman Road after his loan spell ended in January, McCarthy added Town’s current seven-goal top scorer David McGoldrick to his squad, a deal he is delighted with.
"I’m sure we’ve all had a nice little piece of business at some stage for this season,” he said.
"I bet every manager can look at it, but that was really good that we got him on loan in January and the deal was done with him, although we had to wait until the end of the season [to complete the formalities].”