Blues loanee Noel Hunt admits that his loyalties will be slightly split when his parent club Leeds visit Portman Road on Saturday. The 31-year-old, the scorer of Town’s dramatic 95th minute winner on his debut at Charlton last weekend, is ineligible for the fixture.
"It's a bit of a strange one for me,” he said. "I'm here and am loving being here, but they are still my club.
"I had a look at my phone [after Saturday’s match] and I had five or six texts from the lads back there who are buzzing for me. That's nice. Leeds are a great club who have great fans that are passionate about their football.
"Obviously it's been frustrating times for them and sometimes it has boiled over. They have good players and good people though and I wish them all the best.”
Hunt, who hadn’t played for Leeds since the opening week of the season and is out of contract at the end of the season, says he received plenty of good wishes from those at Elland Road when he joined the Blues on loan until January 3rd a week ago today.
"I had a lot of nice comments off people when I left there saying 'Good luck, you're one of the best pros we've seen’,” he added. "I’ve just tried to keep doing the right things for the right people.
"When it comes to matchday all you want to do is play so it's tough when you know you've got no chance of being anywhere near it. At times it feels like you're just training for the sake of training, but you can't think like that.
"You have to train with the mindset that you're going to be involved, even though you know that's not going to be the case, or else you end up dropping your standards.”
Will he be giving manager Mick McCarthy the benefit of his inside knowledge? "I know a lot about their team, so we'll see what happens!"