Town boss Mick McCarthy says he expects new signing Freddie Sears to be challenging to be one of his first-choice strikers from the off. The 25-year-old made his debut from the bench during Saturday’s 3-1 win at Millwall following his switch from Colchester on Friday.
"How do you know he’s not going to be first choice?” McCarthy said when it was suggested to him that Sears wouldn’t immediately go into his side at yesterday’s pre-match press conference.
"It would be so wrong of me to say he’s not going to be first choice. Was Noel Hunt first choice? He might be tomorrow night.
"You earn the right, don’t you? But I take the question as it comes, immediately we’ve got Murph and Didz, who have been great, and Noel Hunt.
"But if he gets in the team and scores the goals, who knows? I hope he pushes for it. I hope he hasn’t come in thinking, and I doubt he has, ‘I won’t be first choice’. I don’t think he’s thinking that.”
McCarthy has been admirer of the Hornchurch-born frontman for a while: "He was up the road so we knew about him quite clearly. He scored against us when I was at Wolves when he was a bright young thing at West Ham [in January 2011, see photo above].
"Everybody thought highly of him and you could see he was a good player. But it doesn’t always happen for young players in the Premier League and he’s had to go off and what I liked about him, having spoken to him, was that he took a step backwards to get another step forwards. Hopefully he’s going to do that with us.
"He’s a goalscorer, we watched his goals, he scores all sorts of different goals, makes them for himself, he makes good runs, he sticks people in.
"There’s no doubt about him, he’s got a good touch and he can play. He’s 25 now, sometimes it takes longer for players to mature.
"Looking at him on Saturday and looking at him in training, I think we’ve got him at the right time. I’m delighted with him.”
The Town boss says that there are plenty of young players who have been rated highly at Premier League clubs who don’t go on to fulfil their potential, but believes Sears made the right decision when he dropped down to League One when he joined Colchester in the summer of 2012 following a loan spell with the U's.
"There are lots of them that don’t do anything, that make nothing of themselves,” he added. "I guess what I admire about him is that he took the step backwards having previously been out on loan.
"I know Alan Lee played with him at Crystal Palace and thought he was a really good player. David Wright, who is also on the academy staff, played with him at Colchester and really liked him, so we got good advice on him.
"He was prepared to take a step back to go and play. Not at a Premier League club where most things are done for you and you get everything given to you and it’s all nice and rosy. It’s not quite the same further down the leagues.
"And you know what, he’s been playing in a team that’s been scrapping away near the bottom of the league and he’s got 10 league goals and I think that says a lot for him.”