Boss Mick McCarthy says he’s been hugely impressed with midfielder Jay Tabb’s performances in the last two games.
Having been largely on the fringes for most of last season, the 30-year-old former Republic of Ireland U21 international has been involved in 16 of Town’s 20 league games this term, starting 11 of them.
McCarthy revealed that he talked with the former Brentford, Reading and Coventry man about his future in the summer.
"I spoke to Tabby at the end of last season,” he said. "He’d got this year left on his contract and we had a discussion, that if he found another club, that he might not play every week here, and he said he wasn’t going anywhere, he wanted to stay here and play. He loves it.
"That’s been proven and he’s played wide left, he’s played in the centre of the midfield. I thought he was great at Charlton, I thought he was different class, and I thought he was last week against Leeds as well.
"The only reason I took him off was because he’d been booked. At 4-1 up if I'd left him on and he'd got sent off, that would just have been ridiculous.
"That would have been stupid of me, remiss of me for not even thinking about it and allowing him to do it and he would have ended up missing Saturday. That’s why I took him off. He’s been great and his attitude to it is just second to none.”
McCarthy says that while players such as Tabb want to play every game, they realise that that’s not always going to be the case but when they get their chance they can always be relied upon to perform.
"It’s good that they want to play every game, first and foremost. They do want to play every game, they’re not happy about it [when they don't].
"But they accept it for the right reasons. If I say I’m not playing them today because I prefer something else, you can’t always give them a reason; they’ve played badly or they’ve missed a cross, that’s nonsense.
"You just pick your team. They’re great at that and then when they get their opportunities to get back in, they always come back and play well.”