Mick McCarthy was full of praise for 18-year-old Teddy Bishop after Saturday’s 2-0 victory over Millwall and joked that he wouldn’t have played him if he hadn’t signed his new contract earlier in the week.
The Cambridge-born academy product, who was making his home debut against the Lions, put pen to paper on a new deal until June 2016 with an option for a further season.
"He’s a proper footballer, isn’t he?” McCarthy said. "I have to say, I got him to sign his contract on Thursday and if he hadn’t have done he wouldn’t have played. I wouldn’t have risked that!
"We’ve got young players and let me tell you, all the scouts come and watch, all the warning signals have gone up.
"They’ve seen him play once and he was just as good today, he glides past people, so I needed him tied down before he was going [to play again].
"I think we’re pretty good at picking out good players. He had a lot of injuries last season and even after playing at Derby he didn’t train then for about a week or 10 days because of a sore knee.
"It’s the usual one, ‘are we protecting a youngster?’. No, we want him to play but don’t ruin him as well. We had a great substitute with Luke Hyam coming on.”
He added: "I’m being slightly disingenuous with that, I may well still have played him but he was a cert once he’d signed it. There’s a difference."
McCarthy admitted that it had been difficult to leave Hyam out of his starting XI - "He’s been a stalwart in the team” - and also Tommy Smith, which he explained was because he had specific requirements from his backline.
"Very much so,” he continued. "I wanted Tyrone Mings at left-back and I wanted a rampaging right-back as well.
"I also wanted a right-footed centre-back and a left-footed centre-back, so one of the centre-backs was going to have to drop out and unfortunately for Tommy it was him.
"But he got on the pitch. It’s my decision, sometimes you can’t even give rhyme or reason for it, except it’s what I want to do.”
He agreed that the side looked more balanced that has generally been the case as a result: "Of course, but it’s been hard to upset a back four which has been as good as ours has.”
Meanwhile, Town's U21s are in action away at Charlton's Sparrows Lane training ground this afternoon (KO 2pm).