Town boss Mick McCarthy is delighted that the Blues’ U23s have made a promising start to their season, Gerard Nash’s third-placed side having beaten Barnsley 3-0 at Portman Road on Monday, their third win in a row and their fourth victory in their five games so far this season.
Speaking after what was largely an U23s side had narrowly lost 2-1 to Premier League Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup last month, McCarthy challenged the youngsters to show that form week in, week out in their bread and butter games in the Professional Development League Two South and they’ve done just that.
"It’s great, isn’t it?” the Blues manager said. "For so long I’ve gone and watched the U23s games and, I don’t know about the players, I think it was destroying the U23s coaches. Sparky [former coach Mark Kennedy] used to be pulling his hair out.
"He’d had bit-part teams, teams where we’d have trialists in or we’d got youngsters in and we’d got players coming back from injury, he never had a settled squad.
"I think Nashy’s been a bit more fortunate than that. And I think what he has had as well is that the first-team players who have gone in and played have all played well.
"There are none of them have gone in and gone, ‘I don’t want to be here’. Gerks was brilliant there the other night, encouraging everybody, as was Tom Adeyemi, and Danny Rowe played well.
"They’ve gone and done the job properly. It makes it a far more enjoyable experience for them.
"But it’s great for the young ‘uns and I thought they were great. I thought Dylan Crowe playing the other night, I thought he was terrific, that’s somebody we hadn’t seen playing. I’m really pleased.”
England U17 international right-back or midfielder Crowe was making only his second appearance for the U23s having started as a first-year academy scholar this summer.
While developing players for the first team is the primary function of a coach at U23 level, McCarthy says they still want to win matches.
"I’ll tell you about the U23s coach, when he gets players in the first team, he gets no credit for it at all unless I say something about him or the academy, they don’t get it,” he added.
"It’s, ‘Oh, the manager, he’s great, he puts young players in the team, he likes putting in youngsters and the academy players’ - the manager. But I would always give them the credit, certainly the academy and certainly Nashy.
"They want to win games. Producing players is great, but they want to win games. I’ve seen how devastated they are when they’ve lost three or four on the bounce.
"And even more so when Lids [fitness coach Andy Liddell] is singing, ‘You’re getting sacked in the morning’ to them, ‘Kennedy out!’, ‘Nash out!' and all that stuff.
"But that’s great banter, it’s like the elephant in the room, whatever you do don’t talk about it. Well, we do talk about it. They want to win games and, of course, it helps produce better players.
"I have to say I didn’t think that was a 3-0 scalping against Barnsley on Monday night, I thought Barnsley were a good side. They had loads of shots but none of them hit the target and the ones that did we dealt with.
"But we saw them off and I've watched games in the past, certainly against the likes of Cardiff and Charlton, teams who have been well organised and been together, a group of kids who have come through, and we’ve been well beaten. We look a much better bet now, which is great.”
Meanwhile, McCarthy says out-of-favour Kevin Bru is still free to move on if a club anywhere is able to take him.
Mauritius international Bru, 28, was told he could find another club in May and was interesting sides in France and elsewhere during the transfer window but no move materialised.
"He can’t find a club here, I don’t know if the Middle East or anybody else is still doing business in any part of the world that can do it. I don’t know, I’ve not explored that,” McCarthy said.
"If there is and somebody wants him, then he can still leave. I thought about giving him a squad number and involving him, but then I thought I’ve got Flynn Downes, I’ve got Tristan Nydam and if they're going to be the future of the club I don’t want to be going back to the future, I want to be looking ahead to the future and they’ve been great.
"He’s training, he’s fine, he’s fit and he’s raring to go for somebody else. He’s training with us all week, he didn’t today because he’s not in the squad, he’s trained with Nashy, but he’s been great, he’s training fine.”