Town boss Mick McCarthy says he has no new injury problems ahead of Tuesday’s visit to Sheffield Wednesday with Joe Garner, who has suffered several knocks including a knee problem recently, and Mustapha Carayol, who was subbed after scoring the winning goal at Preston having been ill earlier that week, both fine. The Blues manager says the weekend postponement of the Hull City match has had little impact going into the visit to Hillsborough.
"We’re OK. Joe, who has been nursing a number of bumps and bruises, he’s training today, so we’re OK,” McCarthy said.
"Muzzy’s all right, he’s trained ever since Preston. It was a great start by him and he’s impressed everybody.”
How does he compare the January signing to some of the other wingers he has had in his time at Town?
"It would be wrong to compare them on one half of a performance but seeing him in training, quite clearly he’s a good player," he reflected. "And seeing his pace, he certainly used that at Preston.
"Tom Lawrence won the [Players’] Player of the Year and all the awards last year, I thought he was outstanding. I thought Ryan Fraser was, and Santie’s been a hit with everybody.
"If he can be as good as any of those, all of those, then he’s going to be a good player for us.”
He says pace such as the Gambian international’s always gives the opposition something to think about.
"If you’re a defender playing against that then if you get too tight and it gets put in behind you, you’re always going to have a problem,” he added. "One-v-ones, somebody that knocks it past you and is prepared to take you on.
"And it’s something that Freddie’s been a real threat at all the time because of his pace and he’s prepared to run in behind people. It’s a real asset.”
Midfielders Emyr Huws, Andre Dozzell (both knee) and Teddy Bishop (hamstring), keeper Dean Gerken (hip) and striker David McGoldrick (groin) are all out for the season, while Tom Adeyemi is still on the way back after his latest injury setback.
McCarthy says the postponement of Saturday’s home game against Hull shouldn’t have too much impact going forward.
"In terms of preparation it’s just changed it but I think you can put too much on that, ‘Oh, it’s ruined everything’ when the reality is we could only nick half a pitch that the ground staff were brilliant for getting us on the Tuesday.
"We’d got the same on the Thursday and me and the lads helped put the covers back on but the frost got in so we couldn’t train there.
"So we trained on the pitch on Saturday. The irony of it was that we trained on Portman Road and the pitch was fine.
"We had a really good session on Saturday, so that’s given them all a bit of legwork and opened their lungs. They had Sunday off with their families and we’re travelling now.
"I don’t think it’s thrown that much of a spanner in the works. And I won’t be saying that afterwards if the results not right, ‘Oh, by the way, it’s thrown a spanner in the works’. It hasn’t, Sheffield Wednesday have played and they got really slapped at Bristol City.
"So maybe if we’d have played on Saturday and won with everything feeling great or we could have played and not won, it is what it is and it hasn’t thrown any spanners in the works.”
McCarthy says he can recall playing on pitches in significantly poorer nick during his day.
"Everybody remembers the Baseball Ground. I’ve seen it since on TV but that was particularly a mud heap,” he recollected.
"But most of them were. We complain now when we see pitches towards the end of the season when they’re not in the best condition and ours is not in the best condition, ours is not great.
"But it’s still great compared to some of them that we’ve played on. And playing in snow, that’s the most remarkable thing, playing in a couple of inches of snow and the lines cleared up. I don’t see that any more.”
With the Hull match now next Tuesday the Blues have four games in 12 days but McCarthy says he’s not particularly bothered about the rescheduling.
"Not really,” he reflected. "Again, what’s the point in me being whinging about it? There are some things I just can’t do anything about, that was that.
"There was a date in April apparently but had we played Hull we were still playing our four games in a short period of time. We’ll get the games played and at the minute we’re all right with players in terms of having a fit squad so we can cope with it.”
He says he will rotate his squad over the course of those matches: "Yes, one team is not going to play all those four games, that’s for sure.”
Despite Town not having had a match for more than a week he says he’s not had too much downtime.
"No, not really,” he added. "I had a break on Saturday night and Sunday with the grandkids, I can’t say it was a break, I have to be honest. I was happy to get back to work, both me and my wife were on the settee zonked!”
Is it hard to shut down as a manager? "Very rarely do I just switch off from it completely, I could think, ‘I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to phone so and so, I’ve got to do this’.
"Certainly if you’ve lost the last game that never seems to go away. At least if you’ve won you don’t seem to think about it as much, you just live your normal life.
"When you’ve lost all you do is consider it, everything that you’ve done, what the players have done and everything else.
"It gets easier the older you get. Getting old doesn’t give you too many benefits, but I guess that’s one of them.”
The Town boss, who has never lost at Hillsborough as a manager, admits it was frustrating not to play on Saturday having impressively won 1-0 at Deepdale the previous weekend.
"Yes, it was,” he added. "I thought we played really well at Preston. I thought we’d had a good week in terms of performances in the three games, but certainly the result was the right result at Preston.
"And they’ve shown what they’re about, they went to Bolton and beat them 3-1 on Saturday, so they had a good reaction.
"We’d like to continue playing how we’ve played against them because if we do we’ve got a chance of winning at Hillsborough.”