Recent signing Freddie Sears looks set to be handed his full debut as the Blues face Sheffield Wednesday at home looking to get back to form after a disappointing start to 2015. The Blues have taken only four points from 15 since the turn of the year.
Manager Mick McCarthy says he’s been impressed with everything about Sears, who so far has been restricted to four sub appearances and one goal, since he joined the club from Colchester for a fee of around £100,000 last month.
"As a young man, he’s a nice young fella,” McCarthy said. "The way he plays, he can drop in and play, he can play on the shoulder. He’s a good finisher. Everything about him.
"And, to be fair, he was coming into a team with strikers playing well, and then Hunty scored two goals at Millwall.
"So for him not to get his chance is not too strange because we were playing really well and scoring goals.”
McCarthy has said he will look to freshen up his side as he looks to halt the downturn with some of those who have been on the fringes of late likely to be handed starts against the Owls.
"Over the course of the season none of them deserve to be left out,” he added. "But there are fresh legs that are there and raring to go and they’re the ones that keep the training sessions going, the ones who have not been playing.
"When it’s Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday we train very little then and it’s the ones who are not playing who have to be out there training every day, keeping the sessions going. And at some stage they have to get a chance.”
In order to get that opportunity players have to impress him on the training field: "If they don’t train properly they’ve got no chance of playing, if they don’t commit to training.
"People will say to me ‘How do you get a chance?’ and I say ‘Train properly’. They say I don’t pick teams on training but I tell them they’d be surprised.
"They might be flying around and I might not ever give them a game until a certain time, but they’ll be ready to play then because they’ve been training properly.
"But if they don’t train properly they’ve no chance of getting a game, they’re never going to get a game, they’ll be sidelined, they’ll be training with somebody else and ultimately be out of the club.”
He admits that players can suffer from fatigue with matches coming thick and fast in the Championship: "It’s always a worry, it’s always a concern, but you get used to it. We’ve got pretty battle-hardened players.
"I think it’s harder for the younger ones. When they come in it’s a bit of a shock to the system doing Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday and covering however many metres they do every week.
"But I think we have players who can cope with it. They’re not young ‘uns, they’re tough, Championship players that we have.”
Regarding Wednesday, who are 10th in the Championship five places and 12 points behind the Blues, McCarthy said: "I think they’ve got 39 points. I was just looking at the league to see where they are and they’ve had a bit of a mixed bag.
"They’ve had a lot of draws and we were just watching the game from last week on their pitch and the pitch doesn’t help them, that’s for sure.
"You’re playing at home and you want to get the ball down, you want to pass it but the pitch was awful and I’m sure that’s not helping Stuart’s team.
"They have got some good players. They’ve signed Will Keane from Manchester United, they’ve signed Lewis McGugan from Watford, they’ve taken Marnick Vermijl from Manchester United at full-back, so they’ve added a few.
"I just think they’ve got a good, solid squad of Championship players and again it’s going to be another hard, tough game.”
The Town boss knows his Owls counterpart Stuart Gray well from their days as players at Barnsley.
"We had a good team at the time, I’ve known Stuart a long, long time, he’s a good lad,” he said. "He’s recognised as a thoughtful coach and he’s turned out to be a good manager.
"It’s alright being a thoughtful coach and having a manager above you, but when you get the manager’s job you’ve got to do that as well and manage the players and he seems to be doing that really well.
"And, of course, they’ve had a takeover there which I’m hoping is good for him, and for Sheffield Wednesday, not against us, of course, but it’s a big club, a good club.”
He says takeovers don’t always work out well for incumbent managers, although he had a good experience in similar circumstances at Wolves.
"There’s always the temptation [for new owners to bring in a big name],” he added. "I’ve been at a clubs where there have been talks about takeovers and I was at one where there was one, Wolves.
"You always get the feeling that the chap who is taking over would like his own man, so you’ve got to be doing particularly well.
"I won the league, so that was OK, although I have to be honest that was with a bit of help from the new owner Steve Morgan because he put some money in and we bought Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Christophe Berra and that galvanised the team and that really set us up to get promoted.
"But you always feel that they’d like their own man there and I’d guess that’s the case, so I hope Stuart keeps doing well. But not on Tuesday, friendship as usual ends at 7.45pm and resumes at 10pm when the game finishes.”
Whatever changes McCarthy has planned elsewhere in his side Bartosz Bialkowski will continue in goal.
At the back, the Blues boss will have to decide whether to stick with his current back four or perhaps bring Jonny Parr in at right-back, in which case Tommy Smith would drop to the bench, as he did earlier in the season, with skipper Luke Chambers partnering Christophe Berra at the heart of the defence and Tyrone Mings at left-back.
McCarthy will have been weighing-up whether to opt for a three-man or four-man midfield. If he switches to a 4-3-3 formation then he may well decide to start with Cole Skuse, Teddy Bishop and Kevin Bru - or perhaps Darren Ambrose - with Daryl Murphy, Freddie Sears and David McGoldrick - or Noel Hunt if McGoldrick isn’t risked - up front.
Should the Blues boss stick with 4-4-2, then Bishop could start on the right and Stephen Hunt on the left with Skuse and Bru or Ambrose in the centre with Luke Hyam still out with his knee injury.
In which case Murphy may well be partnered by Sears with McGoldrick perhaps rested having picked up a thigh problem at Rotherham.
The Owls will definitely be without suspended duo Glenn Loovens and Chris Maguire, while midfielder Jose Semedo faces a fitness test due to a toe infection.
Manager Gray told the Owls official site: "Semedo has had a problem with his toe infection and there is swelling in that region so he hasn’t trained but apart from that, everyone else is OK.”
Wednesday just have had the edge on the Blues historically, winning 17 times (16 in the league), losing on 16 (15) occasions with 11 (10) matches ending in draws.
In September at Hillsborough, returning loanee Jonny Williams struck four minutes after coming off the bench to claim a 1-1 draw.
The Crystal Palace man, making his second Town debut, half-volleyed home in the 63rd minute, Atdhe Nuhiu having put the Owls ahead in the fifth minute.
The teams last met at Portman Road on the final weekend of last season, the Blues running out 2-1 victors with Tommy Smith and Paul Green on target.
Smith stabbed home from close range in the 37th minute, Kieran Lee equalised for the visitors 10 minutes after the break but Green nodded in Stephen Hunt’s freekick in the 67th minute.
Both Town’s front two have had loan spells with the Owls. David McGoldrick spent a month there during the early part of 2011/12, scoring once in three starts and one sub appearance, while Daryl Murphy was at Hillsborough for a month in 2005 while a Sunderland player, making four appearances but failing to find the net.
Canadian-born striker Caolan Lavery, a Northern Ireland U21 international, joined the Owls in the summer of 2012 having turned down a professional contract with the Blues during the previous season after coming through the Town academy. He is currently on loan at Chesterfield.
Tonight’s referee is Stuart Attwell from Warwickshire, who has shown 63 yellow cards and three red in 25 games so far this season.
Attwell’s most recent Town match was the 1-1 home draw with Charlton on New Year’s Day last year in which he booked three players from each side.
Squad from: Bialkowski, Kenny, Chambers (c), Parr, Mings, Berra, Smith, Clarke, Skuse, Bru, Bishop, Ambrose, S Hunt, Tabb, Anderson, Stewart, Murphy, McGoldrick, Sears, N Hunt.