Town boss Mick McCarthy was impressed with new strikers Dominic Samuel and Kieffer Moore as they helped the U23s to Monday’s 8-0 home victory over Watford at Portman Road, but they face a tough task to get into the first-team line-up with the Blues manager similarly delighted with the way “brilliant” David McGoldrick and 10-goal top scorer Tom Lawrence linked up in last week’s 2-2 draw with Reading.
Samuel, who is on loan from the Royals and was ineligible for last week's Championship match against his parent club, netted a hat-trick and Moore once in the hammering of the Hornets at Portman Road.
"Dominic’s a finisher, there’s no doubt about that, seeing his goals from being on loan at Coventry and Gillingham and training here, just in the short time he’s been here,” McCarthy said.
"He hits it fairly hard, whether it’s a side-foot, and he hits the target, he doesn’t waste too many opportunities to make the keeper work.
"He’s not going to score with them all but when he gets in he looks like he’s going to score. He was delighted with [the hat-trick] and so am I.”
He added: "He’s got pace and Kieffer adds a physical presence, I thought he was excellent, [everyone else] just playing around him. The pair of them did well, they were a good partnership up front.”
But another partnership has also impressed the Town boss, with two-goal Tom Lawrence joined up front by McGoldrick against Reading.
"Brilliant he was last week, I thought, him and Tom, a really good partnership.” McCarthy said of the Irish international, who was making his first start since returning to the side after his hamstring injury. "We need that every week, we need that performance.
🎥 U23 GOALS
See all of the goals from #itfc's 8-0 victory over Watford at Portman Road as Patterson and Samuel both grabbed a hat-trick pic.twitter.com/xAHxPidwJz– Ipswich Town FC (@Official_ITFC) February 7, 2017
"But if Didz is fit then he generally produces it, to be fair. He’s been really unfortunate with injuries, but he’d trained well all week and I thought that that was arguably his best performance without scoring, he played really well.”
McCarthy named three strikers on the bench for the Reading game - Moore, Brett Pitman and Freddie Sears - and it seems likely that someone will miss out if Samuel comes into the 18 at Aston Villa on Saturday.
"It gets harder, that’s tough because you have to leave somebody out who has been involved, that’s not going to be particularly nice, not for me, even worse for them,” McCarthy admitted.
"But that’s what all the squad are there for and we’ve hardly been ripping it up, so any new bodies that come in - like they came in last week and started and they all did well - there’s an opportunity for somebody on the bench as well.”
The Town boss says he normally talks to players who are going to be left out of an 18 in that manner: "I’ve always been one that’s had a chat with them but I haven’t had a chat with them, I’ve got that many players at the minute.
"I think I’ve got a little bit of carte blanche to do what I want with them because we’ve hardly been ripping it up in terms of the team.
"You look at how many goals we’ve scored from midfield with Doz, Bishop, Bru, Dougie, he had one in the net but that unfortunately for him that was disallowed, might have been a winner against Norwich. That was unfortunate for him.
"Having more players now and more options available to me, it’s strings to my bow, they’re going to have to put up with it, I’m afraid.”
Lawrence has scored eight of Town’s last nine goals and McCarthy wants more goals from other members of his side.
"We need goals from everywhere else," he added. "Let’s hope Tom continues and gets another nine or 10 goals, wouldn’t it be fantastic for us and for him? But we need goals from elsewhere.”
He says he’s not one to make additional room on his bench by not naming a sub keeper: "If you look at stats the number of times they’re called upon is very rare, negligible, isn’t it? But we’ve had it a couple of times with Bart and with Gerks, but I wouldn’t risk that.
"I wouldn’t risk the embarrassment of being stood and getting a 6-0er and if I was a player I’d want a keeper on the bench as well because if after one minute he goes off and suddenly you’re getting beaten, I’d be thinking ‘Why on earth didn’t we have one on the bench?’.
"We can only play three of them, so it’s insurance, assurance, it’s sensible to have him there.”