Boss Mick McCarthy has hinted that recent signing Freddie Sears could keep his place in the Blues side when Town travel to Fulham on Saturday even if David McGoldrick is fit enough to make the trip.
Full debutant Sears, a January recruit from Colchester, impressed in the 2-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday on Tuesday, providing the cross from which Daryl Murphy headed the equaliser.
"I’m hoping he’s going to be fit and I’m anticipating that he will,” McCarthy said of McGoldrick, who picked up a thigh injury at Rotherham a week ago. "It’s been a shame for him and Murph that both of them have had injuries.
"If you keep having injuries, you can’t keep coming back and playing straight away anyway when someone comes in and plays as well as Freddie does and as well as Noel Hunt did.”
McCarthy made five changes for the Owls game, three of them in midfield, which he felt gave his side greater zip. However, he says the same might not necessarily be the case at the weekend with some of those players not having played too much first-team football recently.
"We made changes to freshen it up and provide some energy and we got that but there are one or two who are feeling it a bit now, having not played for a while,” he added. "I might have to do exactly that with the frontmen as well, just to freshen it up.”
McCarthy says he had 18 fit outfield players ahead of Tuesday’s match and with 16 games to go says he will have to utilise all those available to him.
"I can’t keep flogging the same horse or it’s just going to roll over and pack it in,” he continued.
"I needed to freshen it up and those players who haven’t been playing, if they don’t get a chance after one win in five, then they’re unlikely to get a chance and then I lose them. So it was important that they came into the team and played.
"Whenever I’ve had to change it, whether it’s been Tabby on the left or in the centre or Kevin Bru or Bish, Hunty came in up front, it hasn’t mattered where I’ve had to make changes because they’ve always played well. And the same was the case on Tuesday night, I thought.”
He says it’s down to him and his staff to identify when someone is feeling the pace as the players themselves are all determined to keep the shirt when it’s theirs.
"None of them will admit to me that they’re tired,” McCarthy said, "I could see them coming in on crutches and saying they’re fine.
"There’s always that. It’s up to me and Terry and [fitness coach] Andy Liddell to recognise that.
"They’ll all say they’re OK but Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday after the season that they’ve had, most of them have played most of the games.
"It’s calculated, isn’t it? I’m sat here and we’ve won and they all played well. We might have lost and people would be saying ‘What did you do that for you chump?’.
"Tyrone MIngs, I never thought for one minute that he would play every minute of every game this season because it would be too much of an ask physically to do it in his first [full] season.”
He felt Tuesday’s victory was an important result: "I think it was a significant one after one win in five [in the league] from having lost one in 20. It doesn’t sound quite so good, does it?
"You never try to play it up or play it down, but when we’d had those results and we were 1-0 down at home [it’s great to have won].
"The irony of that was that I was watching the Bradford-MK Dons game with my wife and I said it’s great when you go one down and win it at home, it’s brilliant. I don’t know what I’m going to say for the weekend.
"When were at 1-0 down I wasn’t thinking how good it was though, but it is. It’s just a great feeling and I don’t think anybody’s come from behind against Sheffield Wednesday and beaten them before this season.
"I think that shows the mettle of my squad and my players, which is great, because we were being tested with results and then with being 1-0 down at home.”