Town boss Mick McCarthy says work-rate isn’t why on-loan Manchester City youngster Bersant Celina has made only two Championship starts for the Blues so far but trusting him to make the the correct decisions in the right areas of the field. McCarthy says the 21-year-old, who is with Town for the season, is a “lovely young fella”, who has "terrific ability" and has been no trouble to manage since joining the club in July.
"I’ve had a good conversation with Bersant and it’s not that he doesn’t work hard, it’s trusting him,” McCarthy said of the 21-year-old, who curled a stunning 89th minute freekick to win Saturday’s game at Burton, his fourth goal for Town, having come on as a sub for the seventh time in the Championship.
"Yes, he can win us a game, but equally I don’t want him to lose us a game by trying to dribble out of 18-yard box and losing it there and it ending up in the back of our net.
"It’s not about him not working hard because he works hard, he loves his football, it was great he came on and scored.
"And it is about, yes, trusting him not to run around and do it but to do the things in the right areas.
"If he gets Jonas Knudsen going up on his outside and he decides to ignore him and cut in on the inside and he loses it then he causes us a problem. But he has terrific ability, there’s no doubt about it and it was lovely for him on Saturday.”
McCarthy says Celina, who spent last season on loan at FC Twente, has been no trouble to manage.
"None at all, he’s a lovely young man,” he added. "He trains really hard every day, loves his football, wants to stay out and do more.
"He is always practicing his skills and his freekicks, to be fair to him, so you can see where it came from on Saturday. He’s a lovely young fella, I really like him.”
Saturday’s game saw Kevin Bru, who was told he could leave in the summer and initially wasn’t given a squad number, make his first appearance of the season from the bench.
"Kevin coming on settled it down a bit with his ability to get on the ball,” McCarthy reflected.
"What changed [regarding Bru] that was the fact that Tom Adeyemi, Luke Hyam, Teddy Bishop and Emyr Huws are all injured.
"Had they been fit then it’s pretty unlikely that he would have been playing. But he’s been fabulous in training, he’s been great. He’s been great around the place, he’s never any trouble.
"But as I said on Saturday, he wasn’t ostracised out of the squad either, he’s not been made to train with the U23s, which happens at a lot of places. He’s trained every day with us. He’s trained really well. He’s had his games at international level.
"He’s just been great and he’s our player, he’s being paid by us so he’s there to be made available. He was good.
"He’s kept going and there might be a little element of good management in there, with Santie and people like that, to come on and make the right reaction, it’s great.
"I think Flynn [Downes] and Tristan [Nydam] are going to be really good players, I think they are good players, but there comes a time for 17 and 18-year-olds when it’s getting a bit tough and you need a bit of experience and Kevin gave me that on Saturday.”