Summer signing Cameron Stewart is finally closing in on making his Town debut after a frustrating start to his Blues career. The 23-year-old joined the club on a free transfer after leaving Hull City in the summer, a proposed permanent move to Leeds United, where he spent time on loan last season, having fallen through.
The former Manchester United trainee, who signed a three-year deal with Town, suffered a broken jaw in the final game of pre-season at Leyton Orient, then picked up a hamstring problem in his comeback match for the U21s.
"Cameron’s doing OK,” manager Mick McCarthy said. "He had that real long-term injury and then, of course, he hurt his hamstring.
"He’s just had one setback after another and I’m looking forward to him coming back. He’s training fully, so he’ll be in the squad.”
The Town boss says having the likes of Stewart and recent short-term signings Jack Collison and Darren Ambrose will prove invaluable as players pick up injuries with fixtures coming thick and fast in the weeks to come.
"We’ve been doing all right but suddenly Murphy gets a knock, Luke Hyam gets a knock, Jonny Williams gets a knock, Teddy Bishop’s poorly,” he said.
"All these midfield players we’ve got suddenly feeling ill or having injuries, it takes its toll very quickly.
"We haven’t got that many in the squad, about 22 players. You lose four or five and you’re scratching around for subs all of a sudden.
"I’d say Darren Ambrose is ahead of Jack Collison because he had an injury for a couple of weeks but he played [against Southend for the U21s on Tuesday] and did OK. It’s nice to have that back-up.”
Having tended to match the opposition’s formation last season, the Blues boss has usually stuck with his own preferred system - in recent weeks 4-3-3 - during this campaign, however, he says that won’t always be the case.
"Unless we’re getting battered on Saturday and I have to change it,” he said. "But we haven’t been, have we?
"We’ve imposed what we’ve been doing on the opposition so far. But I changed it at Nottingham Forest in the last 15 minutes, I went 3-5-2.
"They were leaving two strikers up and we were getting chased by two really quick players and it settled it down. It was just a corner kick we conceded from.
"I think that’s being a manager. That’s being tactically aware and being able to change it because the opposition will try and change it. If they’re not having any effect they’ll try and do something else and we might have to counteract it.”