Town boss Mick McCarthy agrees with fans who believe the Blues have as good a quartet of strikers as anyone in the Championship.
Last season’s 27-goal Championship top scorer Daryl Murphy is likely to be partnered by David McGoldrick at Brentford on Saturday with Freddie Sears - who netted nine times for the Blues and 14 for his previous club Colchester last season - and summer signing Brett Pitman - who notched 14 for Bournemouth in 2014/15 - likely to be on the bench.
"I’d agree with them,” concurred McCarthy. "I’d be crazy if I didn’t. I think I’ve got four of the best. My difficulty is going to be leaving them out, that’ll be the difficult part.
"I think the difficult part for them will be that there will be two of them playing and two will be on the bench, and whoever goes on first somebody will be thinking they’re the third choice striker or fourth choice striker.
"It’s up to them to get in the team. That’s great, healthy competition. And, of course, there will be times when I play 4-3-3 and three of them will play.”
He says they’re the right type of people to deal with the situation of having spells out of the side: "Absolutely, they’re good characters, good people. They’ve got to keep themselves right and train properly and be prepared when they’re called upon.
"And they will do because if they don’t they don’t do themselves justice. What they’ve got to do for me is to do better than the one who is left out, injured or suspended or for whatever reason is not in.
"To go in and impress and make sure they give me the problem that I’ve either got to pick him or make it hard for me to leave him out.”
He dismisses the suggestion that the addition of on-loan wingers Ryan Fraser and Ainsley Maitland-Niles means the Blues will be more attacking in the season ahead.
"I think we’ve always been attacking,” he insisted. "We’ve certainly not been a sit back and defend team, that’s for sure. I’ve tried to improve the squad, month on month, year on year, season on season and hopefully we’ve done that.
"I tried last year, we had Cameron Stewart and Alex Henshall, I thought they might bring a bit of pace and craft and guile to the wings. That didn’t happen for whatever reason.
"We’ve got Ryan Fraser and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, and Larsen Touré, who just really continues to impress in training.”
While the Blues seem certain to line-up with a four-man midfield and two strikers at Griffin Park, McCarthy says the squad gives him the flexibility to move to 4-3-3 if required.
"We had to do it last year, sometimes because I wanted to do it," the Town manager recalled. "We had a spell when we went to Wigan and played 4-3-3, thinking they’d be playing that and they actually played 3-5-2 and changed it to 4-3-3.
"It suited us playing 4-3-3 and we had a good spell at that with Murph, Didz and Conor Sammon playing in the team, we had a bit of success. We’re fairly adaptable, but we’ve got to be.”