Fit-again David McGoldrick has confirmed, as expected, that he will not be starting Town’s opening game of the season against Fulham at Portman Road on Saturday.
His two pre-season substitute appearances, at Southend and Leyton Orient, may have confirmed his recovery from a knee injury sustained back in February but last term’s 16-goal leading marksman admits he is still short in terms of match fitness.
Instead the former Nottingham Forest striker is likely to be among Town’s seven substitutes for the live-on-Sky clash against the newly-relegated Londoners, which kicks off at 5.15pm.
He will be itching for a piece of the action but insists he will not be the one to decide when he is ready to make his first competitive start of the new campaign.
McGoldrick, whose rehabilitation included a week working with a USA-based specialist, said: "It’s not down to me, it’s down to the gaffer and the physios to decide when I’m ready. I want to be out there again straight away, but I’ve got to be correct with this knee.
"Saturday is probably a bit too soon to start, but hopefully I’ll be involved in some way in this first game — maybe come off the bench, I don’t know.
"I’ll be doing star jumps in front of the gaffer to try and get him to put me on! Hopefully he might not need me. We could be comfortable, or he might need me. You never know in football. I just hope I can get back on that Portman Road pitch soon.”
McGoldrick’s last taste of competitive first team action came in the 0-0 Portman Road stalemate with Blackpool on February 15th when he suffered a partial tear of the medial ligament in his right knee. The 26-year-old was closing in on a return towards the end of last season but required cartilage surgery which ended his campaign.
Unsurprisingly, he is keen to reclaim his place in Mick McCarthy’s team as quickly as possible and he added: "If I don’t play this weekend then maybe it will be at Crawley [in the Capital One Cup on Tuesday] or at Reading the following weekend.
"There is no date pencilled in though, we’re just taking it day by day. I’d only had one or two training sessions before the Southend game, but I’d been doing loads of running before that.
"When you’re out for five months you lose a bit of sharpness, but it’s coming back slowly. When the gaffer sees fit, I’m sure he’ll put me in there.
"It’s been good to be back training and being around the lads every day. The knee is getting there. You get a few aches and pains sometimes because you’ve gone from not using it for five months to hammering balls with it, but other than that it’s been fine.”