Manager Mick McCarthy says he’s delighted to have signed his former Wolves frontman Sylvan Ebanks-Blake until the end of the season, but doesn’t expect him to be ready for first-team involvement until the FA Cup tie against Preston on Saturday 4th January. The 27-year-old has been sidelined with a broken leg and ankle ligament damage since April.
The Town boss was pleased to have completed the signing of Ebanks-Blake yesterday and also to have tied midfielder Stephen Hunt down on a contract until the end of the season: "I’m delighted with it, it’s a great bit of business, both him and Hunty.
"Sylvan, there were certainly other takers for him, anybody who has got his goalscoring record, certainly in this division, would be a prized asset for anybody, so it’s great we can sign him.”
Leicester, Burnley and Leeds had all been mentioned in connection with the Cambridge-born striker and McCarthy believes the former England U21 international could have earned bigger money elsewhere.
"If it had only been about money then somebody might have thrown a bit more at him,” he said. "I think it’s where he feels comfortable, he knows me.
"Our relationship wasn’t always smooth and did I ever leave him out and give out to him? I did, and he knows that.
"I always had a good relationship with him and he also does with TC, he knows he gets good work out of TC, in terms of the work he does with strikers is terrific.
"I think he knows that it’s a reciprocal agreement, a symbiotic deal, I get the best out of him and he gets the best out of me in terms of how he wants to play.
"From that point of view I wasn’t surprised that we got him because of the relationship we’ve got with him.
"I didn’t know other people were offering him, I’ve no idea but he wanted to come and train with us, he has done and it’s taken him two days to make his mind up.”
McCarthy now has five senior frontmen in his squad: "He [offers something different to the other forwards]. You can never have enough goals and he’s a goalscorer. We’re one of the highest goalscorers in the league, bizarrely enough, from being one of the poorest last year.
"And having been the best in terms of clean sheets we’ve gone the opposite way but if you score more goals than the opposition, you win the games.”
Town fans probably won’t get to see the Blues’ new signing until the new year, McCarthy says: "He’s not ready to play. I’ve earmarked the cup tie on January 4th for him to play. He may be fit before, let’s hope he is, it might be that it’s after, I don’t know.
"He’s joined in his first full week’s training at the intensity of our first team this week and he’s got through it fine. But we can’t microwave fitness.
"We can’t get him fit in two days when it’s going to take three weeks, maybe, we’ll make sure that he’s fully fit.”
Regarding Saturday’s game against Watford, Stephen Hunt has emerged as a concern with a hamstring problem: "There’s just a little doubt about Hunty, he just pulled up in training, so we’ll have to wait and see.”
Paul Taylor, who missed last week’s trip to Nottingham Forest due to illness, will be back in the squad having impressed his manager in the U21 defeat to Crystal Palace in the week: "I thought he did well against Palace.
"He played down the middle on his own and had a really good scrap with the two centre-backs. I thought he competed well. He’s all right.”
The only Town player out with a longer term injury is young right-back Elliott Hewitt, who has an ankle problem.
McCarthy says the Wales U21 international will return to loan club Gillingham when fit: "The talk was that he might be fit for the Boxing Day game but I doubt that very much.
"If and when he’s fit he’ll go back to Gillingham anyway to get some games, which was always the intention. But let’s get him fit first. I don’t think it’ll be the Boxing Day game, but we’ll see.”
Photo: ITFC