Boss Mick McCarthy says now’s the time for striker Paul Taylor to start showing why former manager Paul Jewell paid Peterborough an initial fee of £1.5 million for him in August 2012.
The 26-year-old, who spent nearly a year out with a foot injury, came into the Blues side as a late replacement for new loanee Jonny Williams ahead of last week’s 1-0 victory over Birmingham and was widely viewed as Town’s man of the match.
McCarthy has confirmed that Taylor — who has made only six league starts since joining Town — will again be in his XI at Middlesbrough on Saturday.
"He played very well on Saturday,” McCarthy said. "I was delighted with him. He did all the other things that I’ve been banging at him to do and if he plays like that, well, he’s playing again, isn’t he? If you play as well as that you get back in the team.
"He had a long injury, that took him a while to recover from, of course. I think it’s time for him, for his own career to start pulling up trees, starting to play well and stay in the team and play like the player that Ipswich bought.”
The Liverpudlian reciprocated Portman Road’s warm ovation as he left the field having been subbed towards the end on Saturday and McCarthy hopes there’ll be a repeat performance at the Riverside: "Tayls wants to play, he loves his football, that’s for sure. Let’s hope he’s applauding our crowd again.”
Meanwhile, McCarthy was pleased to see Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, who is continuing to work towards full fitness, score a 25-yard stunner and, more importantly, get 90 minutes under his belt as the U21s beat QPR 1-0 on Tuesday.
"It was a really good goal. He missed a much easier one, like, but it was a really good goal,” the Blues boss said.
"He needed 90 minutes. He had to play and it’ll do him good and, of course, it doesn’t matter scoring the goal, he knows he can score goals, that’s not in doubt.
"The 90 minutes was probably more important to him. He’ll probably tell me differently. It’s more important to me that he played 90 minutes. I’m not concerned about him scoring.”
McCarthy is hopeful that the 27-year-old former Wolves man will get back to his best before the end of the season rather than in the next campaign when he may not still be at Portman Road.
"I wouldn’t be counting on next season because he’s only signed until the end of this season, so I’d prefer it if it was this season,” McCarthy said.
"I hope so, he’s had his 90 minutes, he’s got fitter and fitter, he’s training well. Let’s hope it’s this season. I can’t vouch for next.”