Boss Mick McCarthy believes recent signing Alex Henshall has huge potential and that he expects him to be pushing to get into the first team during the season ahead. On Friday, the 20-year-old put pen to paper on a two-year deal with an option for a further season following his release by Manchester City.
The former England U16 and U17 international spent the last couple of months of 2013/14 on loan with the Blues and made it onto the bench on a number of occasions but without making his debut.
"Manchester City signed him [from Swindon] as a young lad who was full of potential,” McCarthy said. "But signing a young lad at Manchester City full of potential and then him having to get through that array of superstars that they’ve got to get into the first team is incredibly difficult, probably impossible for some of them.
"Whether he’ll ever attain that level of Man City, I don’t know, but he’s got huge promise and now he’s at a club where he’s not going to be able to hide in that U21 team and never get in. I expect him to be pushing to get in the first team.
"We’ll wait and see if he’s got the aptitude, the attitude and the desire to do it, because he’s got an opportunity to play first-team football here, albeit in the Championship. It’s certainly better than the U21s in the Premier League.”
He added: "He’s got exceptional pace, a wand of a left foot, he puts crosses in, he’s a clever footballer and it’s shaking those shackles off. You can sometimes be in an environment where you’re never going to play, you can just be nice and safe.
"But now he’s going to be pressurised to see whether he can play in the first team. It’s a different game altogether playing in the Championship to just being in the U21s at a Premier League club.”
Meanwhile, McCarthy has reiterated his expectation that loan signings from Premier League clubs are more likely to become available later in the summer: "It is a filtering down effect, there will be a lot of players at the World Cup who will come back and have a holiday.
"There’ll be Premier League teams who will take all their players away on pre-season and use some of their U21s for the friendlies until the top players come back.
"Then we may find that there is a filtering down of some players for loan deals. I’ll end up with a squad of probably 22 players, which is cool, I’m happy with that.”